Overview

The Royal College of Physicians in Ireland manages four National Specialty Quality Improvement (NSQI) Programmes in GI Endoscopy, Histopathology, Radiology and Bronchoscopy.

The primary aim of the NSQI Programmes is to strengthen patient safety efforts in participating public, voluntary and private hospitals, enhancing patient care with accurate, timely and complete diagnoses and reports in GI Endoscopy, Histopathology, Radiology and Bronchoscopy.

Every year a national data report for each of these programmes is published by RCPI. Each report includes national aggregate (anonymous) data for an agreed set of specialty-specific key quality indicators measured against key quality targets in addition to key findings and recommendations.

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Our Objectives

The NSQI Programmes objectives are to:

• actively promote a culture of quality improvement by engaging key hospital stakeholders.
• enable individual hospitals and departments to review their data against national targets.
• recognise and encourage opportunities for quality improvement locally.
• improve patient care by minimising diagnostic errors.
• improve communication between participating hospitals.
• identify and share good practice between participating hospitals.
• increase public confidence in diagnostic reporting by providing evidence-based assurance on the quality of these diagnostic services.
• continue development of standardised national quality improvement systems for GI Endoscopy, Histopathology, Radiology and Bronchoscopy.

As the service provider, RCPI offers independent governance for each of the NSQI programmes following the service level agreement with the HSE.

The programmes are not designed to examine individual clinician performance but to focus on overall data in aggregate to establish a national average baseline and to set reasonable targets for quality improvement efforts.

Each programme has a working group comprised of clinicians from the specialty.

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