Advancing Quality (AQ) launch new formal measure set for Hospital Acquired Pneumonia

Following our successful partnership with Liverpool University, we are pleased to announce our new formal measure set for Hospital Acquired Pneumonia.

Hospital Acquired Pneumonia (HAP) is a pneumonia that develops 48 hours or more after hospital admission. There is very limited data on HAP outside of critical care, NHS surveys estimate that, at any time, 1.5% of hospital inpatients in England have a HAP, with two thirds being outside of critical care. HAP is estimated to increase hospital stay by around 8 days and has a reported mortality rate between 30–70% (NICE,2014).

In 2019, our Advancing Quality (AQ) team partnered with Liverpool University to undertake a pilot programme to collate data on the care delivery to patients diagnosed with HAP. Our research found that there are approximately 18,000 cases of hospital acquired pneumonia per year in North West England and that around 1 in 4 of these patients die in hospital, making HAP a high mortality condition.

We are planning to launch our new formal measure set in September 2020. This measure set has been devised to standardise the treatment of this patient population. Our team will work alongside clinicians to implement quality standards, aligned to national guidelines, which define and measure good clinical practice. The launch will be supported by virtual events to share learning about HAP and our approach to improvement.

We will be holding a virtual launch event for the programme on Thursday 17 September, which will include presentations to introduce the programme, give details on the measure set and provide discussion around the HAP population, HAP and prescribing practices and use of a HAP detection tool. There will also be a discussion of HAP in the context of the current COVID pandemic. A full agenda will be made available to you closer to the event

Click here to register for the event.

If you would like to receive the full details on this new measure set, you can register your interest here.

For further information on the measure set, or to find out more about our Advancing Quality programme, please contact the AQ team at advancing.quality@nhs.net.