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Quality must be at the heart of the NHS says Darzi - 11 Dec 2008

“Quality will be the guiding principle of the NHS of the future” according to Lord Darzi, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department of Health speaking yesterday at the London Health conference.

Referring to the High quality care for all NHS review, Lord Darzi spoke of the need to give patients more clout and to change from a service that has “traditionally been a sickness service” to one that is more preventative to tackle some of the “lifestyle illnesses and diseases facing us in the future”.

Darzi also talked about empowering patients so that they receive more effective treatment, providing people with informed choice over the type of treatment available, not simply a choice of access, and the need to keep patients as safe as possible.

London has unique needs, said Darzi, and the message from the London review was “…give us the space, give us the freedom to get on and implement what we need to do at a local level”. Effective leadership is essential to take forward the London Framework for Action: “a leadership with a purpose, a leadership for quality and quality improvement”.