About quality standards
Our quality standards set out priority areas for quality improvement in health, public health and social care.
They highlight areas with identified variations in current practice. Each standard includes a set of statements to help improve quality and information on how to measure progress.
Who are they for?
Anyone looking to improve the quality of health, public health and social care can use our quality standards. This includes:
commissioners
service providers
practitioners
charities
service users and those close to them.
Partner organisations who want to follow a consistent approach when defining, measuring and delivering high quality care can refer to our quality standards. Also, regulators like the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and Ofsted endorse the use of quality standards to help identify and define good quality care.
We've produced a quality standard service improvement template (Excel). This helps providers make an initial assessment of their service compared with a selection of quality statements. The template includes:
how to assess current practice
recording an action plan
monitoring quality improvement.
Example of a NICE quality standard
Our 'home care for older people' quality standard covers care and support for older people living in their own homes (known as home care or domiciliary care). It covers people aged over 65 using home care services, and may also cover some people under 65 with complex needs. It describes high-quality care in priority areas for improvement.
Older people using home care services have a home care plan that identifies how their personal priorities and outcomes will be met.
How you can use them
Our quality standards can be used for:
Quality improvement
identifying areas for quality improvement
designing and conducting audits
writing improvement and action plans
demonstrating the level at which services should be provided/setting goals
training and education.
Quality assurance and monitoring
developing frameworks for quality assurance
identifying gaps in services, benchmarking and monitoring/tracking changes
setting key performance indicators (KPIs) and monitoring performance
evidence of service quality for regulators.
Influencing commissioning
identifying support or changes needed to improve services
supporting business cases along with requests for funding and resources.
Find out more about how to use our quality standards.
Are they mandatory?
Our quality standards are not mandatory. But they do support the government's vision for a health and care system focused on delivering the best possible health outcomes.
How we develop them
We've put together a core list of topics for quality standard development. We created this list through collaboration with the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and other key stakeholders.
Find out more about how we select and prioritise quality standards topics.
Get in touch
For more information about our quality standards, email [email protected].