Better Screening
Challenges
Effective screening can help save lives and improve the quality of life through the early diagnosis of serious conditions. Screening presents different challenges to clinical practice as it is about targeting apparently healthy people and offering to help them make better informed choices about their health.
In delivering screening services that do more good than harm at a reasonable cost NHS organisations face numerous challenges including: adhering to national policy and standards, ensuring high quality in the face of financial constraints and competing priorities, and engaging with hard to reach groups in the targeted population to reduce health inequalities.
What we do?
We work with commissioners and service providers at all levels to help them improve the quality of their screening services.
We deliver the external quality assurance programme for the breast, cervical and bowel cancer screening programmes for the South Central area. We improve quality through benchmarking performance against standards, providing independent advice and ongoing support and sharing effective practice. We also contribute to national policy development and work with local programmes to implement changes to the way the service is delivered.
We support through a separate team within SPH the commissioning of screening services for parts of the South Central area by providing an independent and evidence based service. We work at both strategic and operational levels as required, with coverage across all current screening programmes - antenatal, neonatal, diabetic retinopathy, chlamydia and cancer. The work we do helps commissioners procure screening programmes that meet the quality standards required and offer value for money.
We help our clients embed strong clinical governance arrangements so that risk is reduced and programme performance increased to achieve better outcomes for patients. We have contributed to demonstrable improvements in the quality and outcomes of local screening programmes.
Our local and regional experience of screening programmes allows us to inform and contribute to national policy development of existing programmes and investigate new areas. For example, our national commissioning guidance for bowel cancer and for Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm screening programmes are used by PCTs to inform financial and capacity planning. We also carry out evidence reviews to inform national screening guidance for the National Screening Committee.
The value we bring
Experience: We are the only organisation to be working at all levels; from informing national policy to regional quality assurance to local implementation.
Best practice: We connect our clients with effective practice through our strong professional networks - linking decision makers at all levels.
Specialist knowledge and skills: We have a critical mass of staff with specialist knowledge of screening and screening programmes. Through the volume of work we undertake we understand the high profile of these programmes and the risks in the field.
