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National Confidential Enquiry into Patient Outcome and Death
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Child Health Clinical Outcome Review Programme

NCEPOD has been commissioned by the Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership (HQIP) to undertake the Child Health Clinical Outcome Review Programme on behalf of NHS England, Department of Health Northern Ireland, the Welsh Government, and Jersey.

The Child Health programme is one of four Clinical Outcome Review Programmes which are designed to help assess the quality of healthcare, and stimulate improvement in safety and effectiveness by systematically enabling clinicians, managers and policy makers to learn from adverse events and other relevant data. The other programmes are;

This work programme has built on the work of previous child health confidential enquiries and clinical outcome review programmes. The final child health enquiry report ‘Why Children Die’ was published by CMACE in 2008. This programme collected and analysed a core set of mortality data on children from 1- 18 years.

The Child Health Clinical Outcome Review Programme was recommissioned in 2010 and in 2011 the contract was awarded to The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health. They subsequently published two reports in 2013 under their Child Health Review (CHR-UK) project;

  1. Overview of child deaths in the four UK countries; A retrospective epidemiological review of all-cause mortality
  2. Coordinating Epilepsy Care; a UK wide review of healthcare in cases of mortality and prolonged seizures in children and young people with epilepsies.

Objectives of the programme:

  • Assess the quality and safety of health services, highlighting variation, both positive and negative, in the provision, safety and quality of healthcare.
  • Promote improvements in service quality through local and national learning, and the provision of quality improvement resources.
  • Reduce inequalities in access to, experience of, or outcomes from the delivery of care.
  • Influence clinical practice, commissioning, service provision, policy, and education by making recommendations to improve outcomes for patients.
  • Ensure that all hospitals are aware of good practice examples of quality improvement initiatives for each topic area.
  • Complement and contribute to the work of other healthcare organisations.
A protocol to describe the key features of the Child Health Clinical Outcome Review Programme can be found here:
Understanding Practice in Clinical Outcome Review Programmes tool (UPCORP) - guidance and checklist
View the healthcare quality improvement plan for this programme