High Quality Care for All included a commitment to make a proportion of providers’ income conditional on high quality services and innovation, through the Commissioning for Quality and Innovation (CQUIN) payment framework. The main aim of the evaluation is to assess the extent to which:

• the CQUIN payment framework, in the context of the broader quality strategy, has achieved its intermediate goals of behavioural change in providers and commissioners in the NHS and
• the extent to which these appear to be conducive to improved quality of care for the patients in their health economies

Since many changes may take time before they are detectable in quantitative measures of performance, the research will use in-depth case studies to identify changes in processes, which are proxies for changes in outcomes (desired or otherwise).
The final report will provide:

• an evaluation of consequences, intended or otherwise, and transaction costs resulting from CQUIN implementation.
• an understanding of the extent to which the CQUIN payment framework, in the context of the broader quality strategy, has achieved its intermediate goals of behavioural change in providers and commissioners in the NHS and the relationship between these changes and quality of patient care.
• a national picture of CQUIN schemes based on the broad taxonomy explicit in the CQUIN framework (patient experience, effectiveness and safety in the quality domain, and innovation), but providing further detail in terms of relevant categorisation of schemes developed during the project.
• recommendations for future data collection to maintain the CQUIN dataset and to enable future evaluation of the full impact of the CQUIN payment framework.