ABSTRACT
The responsibility and accountability for the overall quality of clinical care has been placed on the shoulders of the Chief Executive of the employing organisations. This has come as no surprise to the majority of the Chief Executives in the country who always assumed that accountability. Certainly, in their experience of managing complaints and concerns from patients, they have always believed themselves to be held to account by the public for that responsibility. Clinical governance and the strategy of quality improvement demand very different processes through which the quality of care can be explicitly described, to the public and internal and external monitoring agencies, and through which Chief Executives can account effectively for the quality of the services in their organisations. The establishment of effective review processes is essential to the clinical governance agenda. Clinical governance has become the lynch pin for that strategy.
