Making quality everyone’s business: a case study of partnership in primary care

Analysis and improvement of the quality of care has become everyone’s business in the new NHS. Audit of clinical outcomes and of patient satisfaction are to become routine. However, there is a weak link between audit and service quality, reflecting an insufficient emphasis on the process of organisational innovation. This case study illustrates how “a first class service” can be developed through a “stakeholder‐collaborative” evaluation approach. This partnership process can strengthen the audit‐quality link, leading to practical and shared suggestions for service development. Clinical outcome data from 400 consecutive adult mental health patients seen over a five‐year period by one clinical psychologist and patient satisfaction data (for the last 100 patients) were evaluated by 11 stakeholders. They evaluated these data in relation to Maxwell’s six quality criteria. Both the clinical outcomes (i.e. highly significant improvements following therapy) and the patient satisfaction data were judged favourably by the stakeholders, who used the information to suggest service improvements.