Teams vie to find ways to improve care of patients

This year’s 28 submissions for the Best Quality Improvement award in the 2010 BMJ Group Awards cover a wide spread of specialties and services from virtually all geographical areas of the United Kingdom, with many good examples of improvement in the effectiveness and safety of patient care.

In the end the shortlist of four emerged easily. Many entries had ruled themselves out because they didn’t meet the criterion of sustaining their change for at least 18 months; we hope that those applicants will apply again next year.

The shortlisted projects come from a primary care trust, a national specialty society, a combined hyperacute and stroke rehabilitation unit, and a hospital team.

The primary care trust NHS County Durham has seen an average 8% rise in its prescribing expenditure since the late 1990s, and in 2007 its drug and therapeutics committee set a series of targets for drugs management within the Quality Outcomes Framework. Each of …