London quality standards: a case study in changing clinical care
Nuffield Trust has published a review of the London quality standards, the precursor to the seven day services standards.
It argues that using seven-day standards as the basis for downgrading or closing hospital services is unjustified and counterproductive. The London quality standards aimed to reduce excess weekend deaths in hospitals and improve access to services for patients. The review concludes that the standards worked well as a quality improvement programme, but that there was no statistical evidence of improvement on weekend mortality rates or rates of discharge. More....
