What is a Quality and Risk Committee?

The Trust’s Quality and Risk Committee provides specialist advice and support to the Trust Board on the following matters:

• Clinical governance
• Risk management
• Patient safety
• Health and safety
• Infection control
• Patient experience
• Information governance
• Clinical audit and effectiveness
• Staff engagement and involvement

The committee looks after a set of sub-committees, which work in collaboration to develop and direct the Trust’s governance and risk management strategies, policies and procedures.  This includes responsibility for directing and approving the following programmes of work:

• Monitoring the overall risk management strategy and profile and being responsible for ensuring the adequacy of the Trust’s overall risk management arrangements and systems (from financial, clinical, organisational and strategic issues), aligning appropriate priorities, risk control approaches, performance indicators and management plans
• Reviewing and monitoring compliance with national statutory standards, legislative and regulatory compliance requirements and accreditation standards
• Informing the Board where it has significant concerns about the standards of care in the Trust or where it considers any service (or part of) to be unsafe
• Updating the Board on the allocation of resources by the Trust and by other organisations to the Trust that is having a significant adverse impact on the standards of patient care, the environment of care or to the delivery of the Trust’s core business function
• Reporting and reviewing serious untoward incidents, complaints, claims and incidents, including action plans to prevent recurrence
• Ensuring and providing assurance that the organisation’s workforce strategy meets the needs of the organisation, and ensuring the organisation’s workforce can support effective delivery of the Trust’s strategy to provide high quality services
• Guiding and monitoring the development of systems of governance to monitor standards and outcomes of care, including benchmarking schemes

 What is the focus of the quality and risk workstream?

The aim of the Quality and Risk Committee workstream is to review the current terms of reference for the committee and to review what should be actively going through and signing into the committee on a regular basis.

In doing this, the current governance structures will be enhanced, making sure that robust reporting and monitoring is in place. The Quality and Risk Committee reports into the main Trust board, providing assurance in relation to quality and risk matters, ensuring the right information is going in and out of the committee.

The group has met to discuss how best to move forward with the actions required to develop the current committee and further meetings have been arranged to begin the development of this project.  Key elements that the group will be looking at will include looking at the underpinning governance structures, reviewing the role of the committee and its membership as well as the development of a Trust Quality Strategy.