An evaluation of clinical governance in the public health departments of the West Midlands Region.
OBJECTIVE
(1) To evaluate the development of clinical governance within public health departments. (2) To assess two models for examining clinical governance in public health departments.


METHODS
Semi-structured interviews carried out during the annual visits of the regional director of public health to the health authority public health departments.


METHODS
West Midland Region, England.


METHODS
Directors of public health plus other members of public health departments.


RESULTS
These visits demonstrated that there is already a substantial amount of clinical governance activity taking place in the region's public health departments. There was also a need to reclassify many routinely occurring activities and include them under the clinical governance heading.


CONCLUSIONS
The two models both proved useful for examining clinical governance in public health departments, however combining them into a matrix provided the best results. This matrix will still be useful after the reorganisation of the NHS and could be used to assess any public health department in the world. The West Midland public health departments find the visits valuable as they provide a source of external peer review of their activities. The public health departments have ownership of the process.
Hartley
A M
AM
Department of Public Health and Epidemiology, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, UK NHS West Midlands Regional Office, Birmingham, UK. a.m.hartley@bham.ac.uk
Griffiths
R K
RK
Saunders
K L
KL
D004739:England; D006801:Humans; D015274:Interdepartmental Relations; D008485:Medical Audit / Q000379:methods*; D017146:Models, Organizational; D015279:Organizational Culture; D017063:Outcome Assessment, Health Care / Q000379:methods; D011635:Public Health Administration / Q000592:standards*; D013222:State Medicine / Q000592:standards