The Secretary of State in his foreword to the National Service Framework for Coronary Heart Disease speaks of helping professionals to give 'better, fairer and faster care' and of making 'the NHS of old unrecognisable by the time we have finished our ten year programme of modernisation' . The aim is to support the clinician at the point of care by enabling appropriate tools to be available at the appropriate time. The outcome will be the objective evidence required for clinicians to measure the effectiveness of their care delivery and in so doing will support the requirements of the NSF for CHD which lays out the definitive milestones and standards. HIP for CHD is firmly placed in the arena of quality development and is a practical example of clinical governance.
Clinical governance is quality development in action.
It is about finding ways of doing what you do better than the standard. The organising idea, built into the design of HIP for CHD is that quality problems have multiple causes and the knowledge required to investigate and solve them lie in the minds of a number of different people. That knowledge and expertise is aimed at solving the technical and professional issues that have arisen already and will arise. During this time the GP is involved in clinical problem solving whilst putting today's reason for encounter into context with the rest of the patient's health care needs. The prime objective of HIP for CHD is to see measurable improvement at the point of care by using currently available primary care health informatics to support clinical activity including rapid feedback.