Amnis offers help to those criticised by The Foster Report

Amnis has also set out aprocess to help those organisations which have been criticised in the Guide to improveperformance by developing their internal capabilities.

Amnis’ Mark Eaton commented: “Hospitals are complex organisationsemploying thousands of people and with budgets measuring in the hundreds ofmillions of pounds. Any one assessment is liable to be different from anotherand, in the busy world of the NHS, performance can vary from hour to hour – soit’s not surprising that different organisations report different results fromdifferent assessments.

“Unless the UK public are preparedto employ an army of assessors to work every day with each organisationoverseeing what they do at every step, it’s unlikely that we’ll escape a worldthat needs at least some self-assessment and one in which there will continueto be discontinuities between different assessments,” he continued.

“I don’t believe that any hospitalmanagement team has deliberately tried to mislead their assessors. Of course, thatdoesn’t mean that they don’t try to portray their organisation in a good light.

“The problem is that you need toclarify self-assessment performance and get some quality assurance on itsaccuracy before you use it in PR.”

At the end ofNovember, Dr Foster - an independent organisationfounded on a belief in the need for greater transparency about variations inhealthcare performance and dedicated to helping patients make informeddecisions about their health - published its latest annual hospital directorywhich compares the performance of NHS trusts and evaluates the levels of NHSquality throughout the UK.

The Dr Foster Hospital Guide stated that 12 NHS hospital trusts in Englandare ‘significantly underperforming’, despite nine hospitals recently havingbeen rated as good or excellent by regulators. The Guide’s findings are basedon a range of indicators including death rates, infection rates and staffinglevels.

However, the CareQuality Commission (CQC), which had recently given nine of those trusts 'good'or 'excellent' ratings for their overall performance, said it saw no need tointervene. In addition, at least three of DrFoster’s 12 worst-performing trusts have elite 'foundation' status.

Amnis’ Eaton said: “Hospitals adaptto meet the needs of their local population and will change the amount offunding put into specific services based on the need of the population theyserve. In other words, it’s difficult to create a ‘like for like’ measure thatcan be applied to all hospitals uniformly.

“I believe the problems of assessingsuch large and complex organisations should not be underestimated and so Idon’t think the Dr Foster report has undermined the CQC - or vice versa.

“Importantly, I doubt that anyassessment regime for the NHS could ever be perfect but, over the last fewyears, its assessment regime has developed improved accuracy, better ways ofcomparing performance across hospitals and an increasing understanding of thedifficulties of comparing different populations being served by hospitals,” heremarked.

Davinder Virdi, director of strategyat Amnis, added: “Amnis can – and does - help organisations to align theirservice improvement programmes so that they deliver the strategic objectivesfor the organisation. For example, if the organisation identifies a high cost,then we can work with them – in a special process called ‘TransformationMapping’ - to identify the specific actions that would help them reduce thesecosts and improve performance by developing their internal capabilities.”

End

About Amnis Limited

Working withboth public and private sector organisations, Amnis is a consultancy whichspecialises in innovation, transformation and organisational improvement,helping clients plan and deploy strategies for successful transformation. Itsgoal is to help clients not only deliver sustainable change but also to developtheir capability to tackle their next challenges.

Providingboth consultancy and training services, Amnis’ team includes specialists inLean/Six Sigma, organisational development, strategic planning, changemanagement and systems thinking.

Further information from:

RuthBodman, Amnis, 00 44 (0) 870 446 1002; ruthbodman@amnis.uk.com 

BobLittle, Bob Little Press & PR, 00 44 (0)1727 860405; bob.little@boblittlepr.com