Publication of A First Class Service placed quality improvement at the centre of the health policy stage. The term clinical governance was used to capture the range of activities required to improve the quality of health services. Central among these were the need for all NHS organisations to develop processes for continuously monitoring and improving the quality of health care and to develop s...

In the latest reform of the National Health Service great emphasis has been placed on the achievement and maintenance of quality. Mechanisms for ensuring this are being set up under the general title of "clinical governance". What is the meaning of this term? The metaphor behind the phrase is of navigation through stormy seas, but who guides the helmsman? Clinical ethics committees could have a...

Clinical governance is a concept used to improve management, accountability and the provision of quality healthcare. An approach to strengthen clinical governance as a means to improve the quality of maternal and newborn care in Indonesia was developed by the Expanding Maternal and Neonatal Survival (EMAS) Program. This case study presents findings and lessons learned from EMAS program experien...

FRCPE Harrison’s early career was in the Royal Army Medical Corps. Here, he undertook general duties (general practice), clinical venereology, and laboratory work in which he demonstrated a flair for research and development. In the first world war he showed enormous organisational and administrative ability by setting up a venereology service for the British Army in north west Europe based on ...

I n these days where corporate governance seems a watchword for dubious practice within multinational companies, such terms often are bandied around without much thought given to their meaning. A similar word, clinical governance, is used within medicine particularly by administrators and funding bodies who set their own agendas within health care. In 1998, the National Health Service (NHS) int...

In this paper we review some of the initial ideologies regarding corporate governance, focusing in particular on the in the literature dominating Principal-Agent-Approach. We detail the implied assumptions and the thereof resulting consequences for corporate governance, including some resulting inconsistencies. Overall, we find that in the to principal-agent-conflict is rarely defined with the ...

BACKGROUND Little research attention has been given to attempts to implement organisational initiatives to improve quality of care for mental health care, where there is a high level of indeterminacy and clinical judgements are often contestable. This paper explores recent efforts made at an organisational level in England to improve the quality of primary care for people with mental health pro...

STUDY OBJECTIVES (1) To evaluate the development of clinical governance within public health departments. (2) To assess two models for examining clinical governance in public health departments. DESIGN Semi-structured interviews carried out during the annual visits of the regional director of public health to the health authority public health departments. SETTING West Midland Region, Engla...