Clinical Governance Statement

Governance Process

Governance in healthcare is referred to as clinical governance, “a system through which NHS organisations are accountable for continuously improving the quality of their services and safeguarding high standards of care by creating an environment in which excellence in clinical care will flourish”.

A fundamental principle of the Healthier Together (HT) programme is to deliver information and advice that is reliable, consistent, and trustworthy.

Due to the serious impact that this advice on user’s healthcare decisions, it is of paramount importance that we ensure rigorous governance processes to uphold the reliability of the content: 

  1. All clinical pathways and safety netting sheets on the website are developed collaboratively by clinicians from across Wessex. These clinical resources are either drafted by Healthier Together workstream leads or by subject matter experts and then reviewed by the appropriate regional networks (including HT acute network, Wessex Paediatric Innovation Education Research (PIER) network, Wessex Antenatal Care Pathways Network and SHIP Antenatal Triage Line Project Board, Wessex mental health network). Once finalised, signatures are sought from members representing each provider organisation and the resources are reviewed and ratified by the Healthier Together executive committee.  
  2. Parent facing resources are developed by topic expert(s) from across Wessex and reviewed by a member(s) of the executive group.
  3. Following ratification, the pages are proofread by the project manager and website editor before going live on the website.
  4. Clinical pathways and safety netting resources are reviewed every 3 years by the applicable workstream lead and if amendments are required, by the appropriate regional network(s). 
  5. Parent facing resources are routinely reviewed every 3 years. The project manager is automatically notified through an email alert that a page is due a review. In addition, the website offers a feedback function so that users can suggest amendments at any point. This goes to [email protected] which is checked regularly by the project manager and clinical lead.

The above steps make sure that patient safety is ensured by reducing the risk of having outdated or unreliable advice on the website. 

The Executive Team contains a clinical lead, a project manager, an acute lead, a maternity lead, and a lead for mental health. All members are well connected within their respective area, and they will notify the team when there needs to be changes to the website content. 

Feedback from users and the community

It is extremely important that Healthier Together offers content that is accessible and reflects the need of the local population. 

After a page has been formally signed off, it is important for executive team to know that the content is also accessible and correct from an everyday user perspective: the general public. To make sure the new content meet user standards, we add a survey to every new page which asks whether the page has been useful and if the user has any feedback. The survey remains on the page until the page has reached a certain amount of views, and then it is being taken off. During that we will respond to any feedback and make changes where necessary. We also intermittently conduct focus group sessions to gather additional feedback in order to improve the website.

To have an even closer engagement with website users, we invite specific demographic users to join our executive meeting where we present them with content which is relevant to them e.g. maternity pages for a pregnant woman and growing up pages for a young person. 

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