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The Essence of Care: Patient-focused benchmarking for health care practitioners

  • Document type:
    Publication
  • Author:
    Department of Health
  • Published date:
    23 February 2001
  • Primary audience:
    Professionals
  • Gateway reference:
    4656
  • Pages:
    201
  • Copyright holder:
    Crown

'The Essence of Care' has been designed to support the measures to improve quality, set out in 'A First Class Service', and will contribute to the introduction of clinical governance at local level. The benchmarking process outlined in 'The Essence of Care' helps practitioners to take a structured approach to sharing and comparing practice, enabling them to identify the best and to develop action plans to remedy poor practice.

There is no electronic version available for the 2001 edition of this document. However, the revised 2003 edition is available below, with subsequent additions:

Essence of Care: Patient-focused benchmarks for clinical governance

This document contains the toolkit for benchmarking the fundamentals of care. This includes the background to Essence of Care, a description of the benchmarking tool, how to use the benchmarks and record forms for developing action and business plans. Nine sets of benchmarks are also included. It is intended that health and social care personnels use this document to address issues of concern within their areas of work and to improve services already provided.

Promoting health

This new benchmark (15 March 2006), provides a framework for shifting the focus from treating ill health to ensuring promoting healthier life choices is firmly embedded in all good patient care.

Care environment

Published: 1 November 2007

This is the 11th in the Essence of Care series, and concerns the environment within which the care of patients takes place. It is intended for all staff groups caring for patients across all organizations and settings, including patients' homes.

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