Quality services and outcomes
Our aspiration is to be the best, the safest, most effective health and wellbeing provider there is.
Enhancing our care
As an independent healthcare provider, our aim is to deliver the highest levels of patient and member safety, care and service. Our Quality Assurance Framework supports the planning, delivery, monitoring, and continuous improvement of all the care and support we provide.
Our Quality Assurance Framework
- 1Safety - Meeting the highest possible standards of safety by avoiding harm, upholding professional standards and acting responsibly.
2Effectiveness - Providing evidence-based health and wellbeing expertise and services that lead to excellent outcomes.
3Experience - Being a trusted partner to our patients and customers by giving them a positive, reassuring and personalised experience.
We measure our success and Quality through local and national monitoring, analysis and reporting of trends and incidents.
Each month we report on the Safety, Effectiveness and Experience aspects of Quality across our organisation to our operational Boards. A detailed review is presented to the Quality Committee and the Board Quality and Safety Committee each quarter. These reports help us track successes and areas for further improvement, with results shared across the organisation.
Further details can be found in our 2020 Annual Report.
2020 highlights include:
242,000
NHS patient attendances across our 31 hospitals
98%
of hip replacement patients saw an improvement six months following surgery
Top 10
Featured in the NHS's Top 10 UK Hospitals list
94%
of hospitals rated 'good' or 'outstanding' by national regulators
Overall Quality
As a large independent healthcare provider, the Quality of care we provide is monitored by a number of external groups. In England, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) is responsible for regulating our hospitals and registered medical clinics through monitoring and inspections. Hospitals and clinics in Scotland and Wales are assessed by Health Improvement Scotland (HIS) and Health Inspectorate Wales (HIW) respectively. All our hospitals are subject to the same level of scrutiny and review as NHS facilities.
Our CQC Ratings
The regulators complete reviews of all our hospitals. Four of our hospitals – Cambridge, Chichester, Leeds and Tees – were awarded the highest possible CQC rating of ‘Outstanding’.
Overall, 94 per cent of our hospitals have been assessed as ‘Good’ or ‘Outstanding’. If hospitals were found by the regulators to require improvements, we responded by making immediate enhancements. We then notify the regulator of the improvements and wait for a re-inspection. We are confident that we have been able to enhance and improve the Quality of care across all our hospitals.
Enhancing your safety
We participate in the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) (previously Public Health England) mandatory surveillance and reporting of healthcare associated infections. Further details are provided within our annual Quality Report. In 2020, this included, for the first time in five years, no BSSA blood stream infections being recorded.
Award Winning Activity
Our high standards have been recognised within our industry. We’ve collected several prestigious awards: Private Hospital Group of the Year, for three consecutive years, from both the Health Investor Awards (2017-19) and the Laing Buisson Awards (2017-19), a Nursing Times Award for Infection Prevention and Control (2017), two times winners of Nursing Times Workforce Summit and Awards (2020-2021) and a BICSc award for excellence in cleaning training.
The UK’s largest healthcare charity
On The Charity Commission’s list of “Top Ten Charities” Nuffield Health appears at number 3 in the top charities by income, behind only The British Council and Save the Children International. We’re also third or fourth largest in some other categories (including spending and number of employees), and those ahead of us are not, to our knowledge, healthcare charities.