What is IQILS?
IQILS stands for Improving Quality in Liver Services. It is a new accreditation scheme for UK hospitals that care for people with liver conditions to demonstrate that they provide high-quality liver services for patients. This includes clinics and inpatient and outpatient services.
IQILS is run by the Royal College of Physicians and is supported by patient organisations, including the British Liver Trust, PSC Support and Children’s Liver Disease Foundation.
Why is IQILS important?
IQILS is important because it supports hospitals to improve the quality of their liver services and drive up standards of care for people with liver conditions across the UK.
The British Liver Trust says ‘There is an urgent need to improve the standard of care provided by liver services across the country. The British Liver Trust hopes that the new scheme will help achieve this by measuring services to improve the care patients receive irrespective of where they live and by ensuring centres provide patient-centred care.’
How does IQILS work?
Liver services across the UK are registering to work towards IQILS accreditation. To be accredited, they must meet high standards of care. These standards have been developed with patients to ensure that accredited liver services are truly meeting patients’ needs.
The IQILS scheme ensures that each hospital service measures the different elements of the service that they are providing so that they can see how they are doing compared with others. It enables them to share knowledge and resources and embed what works into their daily practice.
What will IQILS mean for me?
If your liver clinic is accredited it means that your hospital meets the rigorous IQILS standards and has demonstrated that it is delivering high quality care. This accreditation is not a one-off badge; your hospital must be inspected by the independent IQILS team and its processes scrutinised closely. For the next 5 years this will take the form of a remote assessment and then in year five a full inspection will take place again.
If your liver clinic is working towards IQILS accreditation, it means that there is a commitment from your hospital and the liver team to provide a high level of service. It is a new scheme so don’t worry if your service is not yet accredited. However, if your hospital is not working towards accreditation, ask them why not and if they intend to sign up.
How will IQILS improve services?
A liver clinic that is accredited has met certain standards including that there is adequate training in place for staff, you can get in touch with your liver clinic when you need to, you are clear about your treatment and options, you are treated with dignity and respect, and your liver clinic is listening to you and trying to meet your needs.
The IQILS goal is to improve your safety and the quality of care that you receive.
How will I know if my service is involved?
The full list of services accredited or working towards accreditation is on the IQILS website www.iqils.org.
How can I get involved?
It is important for your liver service to understand what their service users think about their services and what needs improving. What could they do better? What’s missing? Equally, it is important for the liver services to work with their service users to design and consider how to make those improvements. If your liver service is working towards accreditation, they want to hear from you! If you’d like to get involved in helping drive these improvements, do get in touch with your liver service and offer your assistance and support. We urge you to congratulate them on being among the first services to work towards IQILS!
If your liver service is not listed, ask your consultant or member of the team why they are not yet involved. If you think it is important that they are, you should make this known. Offer your support and assistance.
You can also get in touch with your local and national patient organisations to help support services in working towards IQILS. If there is no liver patient group at your hospital, have you thought about starting your own?
Contact the British Liver Trust for a pack to help you do this or visit the Support section of our website for other local, national and disease specific groups and charities that can help.
If you have any further questions about IQILS please email askiqils@rcplondon.ac.uk