Final Report > Chapter 27: Care of an Appropriate Standard > Monitoring of performance

Monitoring of performance

45 Monitoring performance is a crucially important activity which warrants careful analysis. Fundamentally, its role must be to help to improve the quality of care, not to point the finger or to blame. It is important for two reasons. First, it enables clinical teams, through the process of clinical audit, to review and improve the quality of the care they provide to patients. Both local audit and national audit have a role in achieving this. Second, by the publication of information on performance, the public are included and informed about how well their NHS is performing and how well standards are being met. Thus information on performance and its publication are crucial elements in the accountability of the NHS to the public. Monitoring performance entails a number of phases which we consider here in turn.