Sustainability in quality improvement: redefining value

ABSTRACT Sustainability can be considered a domain of quality in ­healthcare, extending the responsibility of health services to patients not just of today but of the future. The longer term ­perspective highlights the impacts of our healthcare system on our environment and communities and in turn back onto population health. A sustainable approach will therefore expand the healthcare definition of value to measure health outcomes against environmental and social impacts alongside financial costs. We set out a practical framework for including these new dimensions in an already well-defined model of quality improvement. This has the potential to harness the growing quality improvement movement to shape a more sustainable health service, while improving patient outcomes. Early experience suggests that the new model may also provide immediate ­benefits, including additional motivation for clinicians to engage in quality improvement, directing their efforts towards high value interventions and enabling capture and communication of a wider range of impacts on patients, staff and communities.