Consistently NHS Confederation members identify quality and safety as one of their top strategic priorities.
The focus on both quality and the empowerment of patients in the Government's Equity and excellence: liberating the NHS white paper is welcome and has been a familiar theme of policy documents over the last 20 years. The problem has always been how to convert rhetoric into reality and how in this new policy to reconcile the objectives of putting patients at the centre of services and empowering professionals.
At the same time as this policy is unfolding, the change in the financial climate presents an immediate challenge for everyone to be more innovative and efficient in the way quality is pursued. How to maintain and improve quality within constrained health service resources has become an even more important question.