The Scottish Health Council

NHS Quality Improvement Scotland NHS Quality Improvement Scotland (NHS QIS) was established as a Special Health Board by the Scottish Executive in 2003, in order to act as the lead organisation in improving the quality of healthcare delivered by NHSScotland. By ‘improve’, we mean the improving of the experiences of patients and the outcomes of their treatment while in the care of NHSScotland. We work to achieve these goals through an analysis of scientific evidence, by listening to the needs and preferences of patients and carers, as well as the experiences of healthcare professionals. Our Role The role of NHS QIS is to: • Provide clear advice and guidance to NHSScotland on effective clinical practice, in order that changes can be made to the benefit of patients. Our advice and guidance is based on a thorough review of the evidence available. • Set clinical and non-clinical standards of care to help improve performance and set targets for continuous service improvement. Such standards show the public the level of care they can expect. • Review and monitor the performance of NHSScotland to determine how well NHS services are performing against the targets that we have set. Instances of serious service failure within NHSScotland will also be investigated by NHS QIS and recommendations made to prevent their reoccurrence. • Support and encourage NHSScotland staff in improving services through running development programmes, publishing best practice statements and organising conferences and events that will aid the sharing of best practice. • Promote patient safety by learning from past experiences and putting arrangements in place that will ensure that patients are safe at all times. NHS QIS is also an umbrella for several other organisations such as the Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network (SIGN), Scottish Medicine Consortium (SMC) and the Scottish Health Council (SHC) that work to improve the quality of healthcare in Scotland. Find out more about NHS QIS and current vacancies by visiting www.nhshealthquality.org