Quality Accounts

A Quality Account is a report about the quality of services provided by an NHS healthcare service. The report is published annually by each NHS healthcare provider and is available to the public. Quality Accounts aim to enhance accountability to the public and engage the leaders of an organisation in the quality improvement agenda.

Last year the first statutory Quality Accounts were published, covering activity for 2009/10. Eventually all healthcare providers of NHS services or sub-contractors providing healthcare services will be required to produce a Quality Account. Community health service providers will be publishing Quality Accounts this year for the first time. Primary care providers are not required to publish a Quality Account this year.

The regulations state that Quality Accounts must be published by June 30 each year following the end of the reporting period. They should be published electronically on NHS Choices (www.nhs.uk) or another website if NHS Choices is not available at the time of publication. A copy is also to be sent to the Secretary of State.

Healthcare providers should also email qualityaccounts@dh.gsi.gov.uk by June 30 with a copy of their Quality Account or provide a link to the website where it is published.

Most organisations already use a system to publish and maintain their profile pages on NHS Choices and these organisations can now upload their Quality Accounts to their profile page. Organisations that do not have this facility (including ambulance trusts and some community providers) should email a copy to UploadQualityAccount@dh.gsi.gov.uk. However, the obligation will still fall to the healthcare provider to ensure the Quality Account is made available on a website by June 30.

The Quality Account should be sent as a PDF (including meta tags and description) and the email should clearly state that the document needs to be uploaded and published on the NHS Choices Quality Accounts pages. Gradually more and more healthcare providers will be able to edit their profile pages themselves.

For queries relating to profile pages on NHS Choices and the content management system please contact thechoicesteam@nhschoices.nhs.uk.

The Quality Accounts toolkit (PDF, 1.01 mb) on the Department of Health website provides further information on producing a Quality Account.