Quality Standard for Imaging (QSI)

The Quality Standard for Imaging (QSI)©, sets out the criteria for defining what makes a quality imaging service. The standards were developed as a collaboration between the Royal College of Radiologists and the College of Radiographers and continue to be owned and updated by the Colleges.

*© QSI is copyright to IQI Limited (a collaboration between RCR and CoR)

The QSI Quality Mark offers imaging services an opportunity to be formally recognised for meeting the Quality Standard for Imaging. It is available to all UK imaging services working towards meeting the Quality Standard for Imaging (QSI).

Services that are currently accredited or going through the accreditation process with UKAS will be eligible to join the Colleges’ scheme. The Colleges value and recognise the work that accredited services will have put into attaining their accreditation and will therefore offer a 'fast-track' admission process for services.

Services that have achieved and maintained UKAS accreditation against the QSI standard will automatically be eligible for the award of the QSI Quality Mark. We will honour this fast-track entry arrangement until 30 June 2028 .

Each service will have an individual conversation with the QSI team to determine where you sit within the Colleges’ cycle and discuss options for future review dates.

For more information about what this process involves please get in touch with the QSI team on [email protected].

Both Colleges are committed to continuing to support our members and Fellows, and the services of which they are a part, to engage in quality improvement for patient benefit. The QSI and QSIN standards will remain available as a resource for all stakeholders, and as professional membership bodies we will, of course, answer questions about the standards from any member or Fellow.  The Future NHS platform will remain open to those already registered until July 2025

Our QSI Quality Improvement Network will exist to facilitate improvement, and to support services working towards meeting the QSI and achieving endorsement under the Colleges’ scheme. Membership will be available to all services that wish to take it up, though the support available to network members will be designed specifically with progression to the Colleges’ QSI Quality Mark in mind. We encourage you to continue to engage with our QI Partners regarding the support that you or your service would find valuable.

Across the UK the QSI standards are recognised as the hallmark for quality within imaging services. As such both the Colleges’ and UKAS schemes are recognised.

The NHS values the work that imaging teams undertake to systematically evidence their compliance with relevant standards, through engagement with assessment and quality improvement schemes.

The Colleges have developed strong relationships with NHS England, NHS Wales and NHS Scotland along with services in Northern Ireland over the years. Since the announcement of our new scheme, we have worked with organisations in all four devolved nations to ensure they have complete understanding of our scheme and our continued dedication to the Quality Standards for Imaging (QSI).

The Colleges have experience and expertise in running assessment processes and have utilised this to design the scheme and guide its implementation, along with learning from other organisations running similar schemes in the UK and internationally, both within healthcare and other industries. The final model reflects a holistic approach to objectively and rigorously evaluating the achievement of standards, and to facilitating continuous quality improvement through sharing expertise and good practice.

As with other schemes of this nature, our scheme will analyse the way in which a service demonstrates that it meets the standards through written evidence and an onsite visit undertaken by a review team that consists of competent professionals reflective of the imaging service they review. A quality assurance process will be in place to ensure that the Quality Mark is awarded appropriately to services that meet the standard. Services will need to provide evidence that they have responded appropriately to any areas where the review team identifies a need for improvement, whether as a requirement for the Quality Mark to be awarded (where standards are not met), or to enhance the robustness or sustainability of the ways in which particular elements of the standard are achieved. Any service concerns identified by the review team will be raised at the time of the visit in order the service can consider any immediate actions which is required.

The Colleges have worked hard with our members and Fellows over many years to ensure that the standards statements set out in the QSI reflect what is required to deliver an effective imaging service that provides excellent patient care. It is not in the Colleges’ interests to seek to apply those standards with anything other than objectivity and rigour. As part of our scheme, we will continue to identify areas where our reviewers agree that services are not achieving our standards and outline the action that needs to be taken if the Quality Mark is to be awarded.

As with accreditation the QSI Quality Mark process will analyse the way in which a service demonstrates that it meets the standards through written evidence and an onsite visit undertaken by a review team that consists of competent professionals reflective of the imaging service they review. It will be a rigorous process that will ensure confidence in a services level of quality and that the QSI Quality Mark is awarded appropriately to services that meet the standard.

The QSI 2021 standards were designed to emphasise outcome measures (what quality looks like in practice) rather than the inputs required to achieve quality. This ensures that QSI remains applicable to a range of services and service delivery contexts. The Colleges scheme will reflect this ethos and allow for a more flexible and individualised approach to implementing QSI whilst ensuring consistency of standards.

The Colleges scheme will also have a focus on celebrating services’ successes and highlight areas of good practice to the wider QSI community.

Participating services will pay a single annual subscription for the level of membership that applies to them. Services that attain the Quality Mark will remain members of the QSI Hub but will only pay the relevant Quality Mark subscription.

Details on the costings for Hub membership are available here.

The Quality Mark subscription fee will be tailored to individual services taking into consideration a variety of factors including service size and the modalities covered. To receive a quote for your service please complete the quote registration form linked below.

You can join the scheme as a Quality Mark reviewer and influence the standard of QSI across the country. Our expert reviewers will engage with other imaging services to understand how they tackle the complexities of high-quality service delivery. In doing so, you will gain in-depth insights into how best to approach similar circumstances in your own service, putting you in a great position to improve upon any specific challenges you and your colleagues are dealing with.

The Royal College of Radiologists (RCR) and The College of Radiographers (CoR) have worked together to develop the Quality Standard for Imaging Networks (QSIN) ©. The standards are jointly owned and updated by the Colleges.

The QSIN is written to stand alone; and emerging or nascent networks can use it as part of an internal quality improvement programme. All processes developed for quality improvement should be embedded and in routine use to achieve a culture of quality. While led from the top of the service, a culture of quality is everyone’s responsibility. These standards are designed to encourage all services to become part of an imaging network, with the benefits of mutual support and learning this brings.

As many networks are still in the early stages of development, the Colleges do not plan to begin assessing networks against QSIN until 2025. We are keen to ensure the process we develop does not duplicate work for networks and is fit for purpose. As such we will be consulting with a variety of imaging networks as we develop our plans.