£5.5m project to assess Quality, Safety and Outcomes of Health and Social Care

Kent’s Personal Social Services Research Unit (PSSRU) has received £5.5m funding from the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) to investigate the UK health and social care system’s quality and safety and the subsequent impact on patient outcomes.

Kent’s PSSRU will lead the new NIHR Policy Research Unit (PRU) in collaboration with the universities of Oxford, Leeds and Bradford, and the Picker Institute Europe. The Quality, Safety and Outcomes of Health and Social Care PRU (QSO PRU) will explore policy about patient and care recipients’ health and wellbeing outcomes, their experiences of care, issues concerning the safety of care, and how the care system responds to adverse care events (for example, clinical negligence).

PRUs, funded by NIHR’s Policy Research Programme, assist government and relevant bodies to ensure they are best informed when making policy decisions about health and social care.

The QSO PRU programme builds on previous QSO PRU funding, with this new phase beginning in January 2024 and running over a 5-year period.

Kent’s PSSRU is also a main partner in the Adult Social Care PRU (ASCRU), led by the London School of Economics.

Professor Julien Forder, Director of PSSRU, who will lead the QSO PRU and is Kent lead for ASCRU, said: ‘We are delighted with this opportunity to produce research that will give government and related organisations evidence that helps them in making policy decisions around health and social care. These awards signal Kent’s leading role in health and social care policy research.’