Commissioners are crucial to improving standards of care.
These include the improving standards of care provision, raising capital investment and navigating the team through organisational mergers.
It plays a role in Scotland, the rest of the UK and throughout many parts of the world in influencing decision-making, with the priority of improving standards of care for patients.
Princess Anne has come under fire from animal rights groups after suggesting that horses should be farmed for their meat as a way of improving standards of care for the animals.
A spokesman said: "This government has taken tough economic decisions that have allowed us to invest in our NHS, which is meeting record patient demand whilst improving standards of care.
Recommendations for improving standards of care are likely to require additional funding and resources, raising questions about the cost-effectiveness of such healthcare improvements.
Further, working with lower-capacity providers to improve quality and expand their range of services is an important part of improving standards of care in the private sector, a key promise of franchising and one that selectively choosing only high-capacity providers negates.
Whilst policy and best practice such as the UNICEF Baby Friendly Initiative are steadily improving standards of care for breastfeeding mothers in UK hospitals [ 22], understaffing and lack of resources mean that women are not always able to access the support that they require from routine health care [ 6].
Regular national audits, initially of oncology treatments, then of cardiovascular disease and stroke in England, have been successful in improving standards of care and in identifying areas where services should be enhanced 1– 4. Auditing diabetes-related outcomes might be seen as even more challenging because of the diversity of adverse outcomes and their causation.
Care bundles aim to improve standard of care and patient outcome by promoting the consistent implementation of a group of effective interventions.
