Improving the quality of health and social care is at the heart of the new vision for the NHS articulated by Lord Darzi in High Quality Care for All. This vision is being implemented in the East of England through the Towards the Best, Together programme.

There are three key aspects of healthcare quality being tackled through this programme:

• Patient safety - to make healthcare as safe as possible;
• Clinical effectiveness - to provide effective healthcare;
• Patient experience - to ensure the experience of patients in contact with health services is as good as it can be.

As part of High Quality Care for All, Strategic Health Authorities have been asked to establish Quality Observatories (QO) to help measure and monitor the quality of our health services. Erpho is working with the East of England Strategic Health Authority to develop a QO for the East of England.

This erpho webpage will provide data and analysis of relevant metrics as a precursor to the development of a QO. A range of indicators developed centrally is currently available from the Measuring for Quality Improvement section of the Information Centre website.

Hospital mortality reports have been produced for each NHS trust in the East of England and can be accessed by following this link.