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Dept of Health

Answer

Mr. Berry: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how he plans to support primary care trusts in conducting regular audits and reviews of local children's health services. [223849] Dr. Ladyman: The Department has set out a framework for the national health service for continuous improvement in the overall quality of care people receive, including children, in "Standards for Better Health". Underpinning this is clinical governance, including clinical audit, which provides healthcare organisations, including primary care trusts, with a systematic means of ensuring compliance with their statutory duties. The Healthcare Commission has recently completed an extensive public consultation on a new system for assessing and performance rating NHS trusts in 2005-06 against these standards. The national service framework for children, young people and maternity services requires each health economy to develop a managed local children's clinical network to review and meet the needs of the local population. As set out in "National Standards, Local Action", strategic health authorities (SHAs) are responsible for developing healthcare improvement plans in their local areas and making sure that local health services, including children's services, commissioned by primary care trusts are of a high standard and are performing well. The "Better Metrics" project offers primary care trusts a range of clinical measurements of performance for local target setting, which is available on the website of the office of the SHAs at www.osha.nhs.uk

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

432 c1433-4W;432 c1429-30W; 223849

Session

2004-05

Subjects

Children Health services Monitoring Standards

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk