Quality is an issue of central importance in the NHS and yet, despite a considerable number of initiatives, programmes and organisations that have focussed on improving quality in the NHS over recent years, there is no comprehensive, reliable balanced and rigorous account of the strengths and weaknesses in healthcare delivery. This book provides an unique, authoritative and accessible account of the state of quality in the NHS. Unless information on quality is properly gathered, organised, analysed and used, the health service will continue to lack a foundation on which sustained and systemic...