28.05.14
Changing how we change the NHS
Source: National Health Executive May/June 2014
The NHS is the biggest single healthcare system in the world and it deserves to be recognised as being the best at healthcare improvement in the world. NHS Improving Quality’s new managing director Steve Fairman examines how we’re changing the way we change and improve the NHS.
We all read and hear every day that the NHS is in trouble and that the next 12-24 months will continue to be a real challenge. Yet every day we see shining examples of pure brilliance and world-class, leading-edge care being delivered within the NHS by its amazing and dedicated staff. And so in the midst of current turmoil, there is optimism.
We need to take that optimism and use it to inspire widespread positive change for all users of NHS services. Pockets of brilliance alone aren’t good enough; and pockets of poor-quality, poor-value care are unacceptable. We need nothing less than consistently and reliably high-quality and high-value care, irrespective of our postcode, health condition or the day of the week.
So how are we, once and for all, going to move from rhetoric to action? We know that doing more of the same isn’t going to work and that a sticking plaster won’t fix things. How can we get from where we are now to where we need to be, as soon as we possibly can?
NHS Improving Quality is very different from all of our previous national improvement organisations. As the new, single improvement entity for the NHS, we have amassed a phenomenal wealth of experience and expertise about improvement, all in one place.
We have learned from what has gone before, but recognise that times have changed and will continue to change ever more rapidly. This means those same improvement approaches won’t necessarily work anymore. We need new answers, and new approaches to finding those answers, developed from new understanding and new ways of thinking about the challenges we face. This thinking will need to come from both within and outside the NHS. We are seeking the best thinking from other industries and other healthcare systems around the world to distil the very best learning for the NHS.
This is where our work is essential to the future of the NHS. It needs to have the embedded capability and capacity to change, improve, evolve and adapt, driven by staff at all levels, from the national leadership to frontline support staff.
We will play a key part at the centre of the transforming NHS and will bring partners in the health and care system together. This will inform and inspire both the positive and well-informed service improvement needed in many individual organisations, and also the more fundamental change that must happen across and between those organisations to maximise the benefit for patients.
Furthermore, we will only be doing at a national level what is practical for us to do. We will focus on building effective partnerships to enable local diffusion and delivery of improvement and innovation.
And we at NHS Improving Quality are not exempt and need to show leadership. We will be practising what we preach. We will be lean, effectively communicate and engage about our work and measure and evaluate all that we do. We will be at the cutting-edge – learning from around the globe, curating knowledge and intelligence and applying it to our work.
To share some of this new learning we are going to hold an Improvement Summit for the NHS later this year.
If you would like to register your interest to attend please email [email protected] and we will send you further details as soon as possible.
Tell us what you think – have your say below or email [email protected]