Maintaining Quality

Maintaining quality (often called Quality control) is about checking how well services are performing and making sure improvements last.

Why it matters

Maintaining quality helps deliver safe, high-quality care every day. It enables teams to:

• spot when care meets expectations
• identify early signs of declining quality
• act quickly to improve care

Key activities

• strong systems to monitor quality of care and performance
• using timely data
• identifying variation
• comparing results against agreed goals
• building quality checks into everyday work
• identify early issues using:
• standardised processes
• clear escalation routes
• visual tools

Key activities during change

To track the impact of new ways of working, use both:

• qualitative data (experience and feedback)
• quantitative data (measures and metrics)

Put systems in place to track the impact of new approaches and sustain improvements.

Healthcare Improvement Scotland provides more detail on maintaining quality.