TY - JOUR T1 - Improving quality JF - Future Hospital Journal JO - Future Hosp J SP - 157 LP - 157 DO - 10.7861/futurehosp.3-3-157 VL - 3 IS - 3 AU - Tom Downes Y1 - 2016/10/01 UR - http://www.rcpjournals.org/content/3/3/157.abstract N2 - Welcome to this edition of Future Hospital Journal with a focus on quality. So what is quality? In healthcare, the answer to this question has rapidly changed over the last 50 years. Before Sir Austin Bradford Hill published the first randomised control trial in the early 1950s, quality was dependent on the craftsmanship of the individual clinician, applying expertise, with a limited range of treatment options. Much has changed in those intervening years; medical researchers have published approaching 20,000 original papers each year driving evidence-based medicine forward, while large numbers of new diagnostic technologies and a wide range of treatment options have become available. The change in complexity of our healthcare system has been dramatic.So what of quality today? We recognise quality in the manufactured products around us in our everyday lives, for example the car that is reliable, efficient, safe and competitively priced. We know the experience of quality in customer service; the retailer … ER -