‘Revolution in transparency’ for NHS

The NHS Commissioning Board is to lead a “revolution in transparency” which will see the NHS become a world leader in the availability of information about its services, the new government mandate says.

Health secretary Jeremy Hunt yesterday delivered the first mandate from the government to the NHS CB setting out what patients can expect from GPs, hospitals and the wider NHS over the next two years.

“An objective for the NHS Commissioning Board is to shine a light on variation and unacceptable practice, to inspire and help people to learn from the best,” it says.

“We want a revolution in transparency – so that the NHS leads the world in the availability of information about the quality of services.”

The mandate requires the reporting of outcome data for all major services.

“The NHS should measure and publish outcome data for all major services by 2015, broken down by local clinical commissioning groups where patient numbers are adequate, as well as by those teams and organisations providing care,” it says.

NHS Chief executive David Nicholson said these will be published on the new ‘customer service platform’ being built by the commissioning board which he described as the “daughter of NHS Choices.”

Health secretary Jeremy Hunt said the most effective way to drive improvement is for people to be able to understand where they are performing well in the system and where they are not.

He said patients should be able to put in their post code and see how their local hospital and other health services compare nationally and CCGs should be able to do the same.

“We want the most comprehensive information management system of anywhere in the world. This will take a full two years to get to the place where this information is relatively gap-free,” he added.

The mandate also requires the systematic development of clinical audit and patient-reported outcome and experience measures, and for services to make it easy for patients and carers to give feedback on their care and see reviews by other people.

Specifically, patients will be able to give feedback on the quality of their care through the “Friends and Family Test” starting from next April.