By Ron Cullen, Chief Executive, Renal Association
The UK Renal Registry’s mission statement, “Putting Data into Action” aims to improve patient care by national audit and supporting research, innovation and quality improvement (QI). As the quality of the Registry’s data has improved, so has the desire to make a positive difference to kidney patients with the data we collect, and to ensure “quality assurance and quality improvement is built into all that we do”.
The QI programmes, delivered through the Registry’s QI facilitators in partnership with the renal community, have been working to deliver on this vision. New innovations have been introduced – the AKI master patient index, an increasing presence of patient focused measures both as outcome measures and as tools to support a person centred approach to care, and the Kidney Quality Improvement Partnership which has been rolled out over the past 12 months across five regions and is about to move into the South West and Paediatric renal community this year. This is all part of the challenge and call to action for the public and professionals, within and beyond the renal community to Think Kidneys.
I was heartened at UK Kidney Week this year to see presentations by the teams involved in the various programmes sharing their learning and experiences, and also to hear the UK Renal Registry mentioned and utilised by other programmes across the country. Neither the quality improvement programmes nor the registry would be able to exist without the partnership and cooperation of the renal community and I hope we can continue to work together to become even more effective, efficient and innovative in the coming year.