Why we’re doing this project
Quality improvement involves designing and redesigning work processes and systems that deliver health care with better outcomes and lower cost, wherever this can be achieved. The King’s Fund has called for the widespread adoption of quality improvement approaches in order to improve patients’ experiences of care at a time of increasing financial and workforce pressures. It is important that mental health care trusts are included in this.
Our aims are to:
- promote better understanding of quality improvement within the mental health care sector
- understand how and why some mental health care trusts have already embraced quality improvement strategies
- distil some practical lessons about successfully embedding quality improvement more widely in mental health trusts.
What we’re doing
In this project, we are particularly focusing on clinical and non-clinical leaders in NHS mental health care trusts to understand how they can help build a culture of quality improvement within their organisations.
Our approach to this work is to:
- engage with leaders from NHS mental health care trusts, as well as experts in the field of quality improvement, to establish how capability for quality improvement can been built most effectively
- capture the learning from this process in a report, to be published in spring 2017.
Presentations from our seminar
In January 2017 we hosted a seminar for leaders from NHS mental health care trusts and experts in quality improvement. The seminar provided the opportunity to hear from mental health trusts that have embedded quality improvement approaches.
View presentations from this seminar:
Quality improvement in mental health
Dr Angus Bell, Senior Clinical Director for Adult Services, Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust.
What does it mean to be improvement focused?
Dr Amar Shah, Associate Medical Director for Quality Improvement at East London NHS Foundation Trust.
How we can work with your organisation
- Find out more about how we can work with your organisation to build a culture of quality improvement
- Read about our work with the quality board at Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust to redesign the trust’s approach to quality improvement