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Report

Quality improvement in mental health

Quality improvement approaches – increasingly well-established in NHS acute hospitals – could play a key role in improving the quality of mental health care.

A growing number of mental health providers (in the UK and beyond) are beginning to embed quality improvement across their organisations, with some encouraging results. The approach is based on the concept that sustained improvement is best achieved by empowering frontline teams, service users and carers to design, implement and test changes to services.

This report describes the quality improvement journey of three mental health organisations (two in England and one in Singapore). It provides key insights and lessons for others considering embarking on a similar journey.

Key findings

  • Embracing quality improvement requires a change in the traditional approach to leadership at all levels of an organisation, so that those closest to problems (staff and patients) can devise the best solutions and implement them.

  • Doing quality improvement at scale requires an appropriate organisational infrastructure, both to support frontline teams and to ensure that learning spreads and is taken up across the organisation.

  • Tools and approaches used in the acute hospital sector can be adapted for use in mental health care, including in community settings.

  • Success is most likely when there is fidelity to the chosen improvement method, and a sustained commitment over time.

  • The strong emphasis on co-production and service user involvement in mental health can be harnessed as a powerful asset in quality improvement work.

Policy implications

  • Regulators and other national bodies need to ensure that they operate in a way that allows quality improvement to thrive in local organisations.

  • NHS England and NHS Improvement have an important role to play in helping mental health providers to share good practice on quality improvement and connecting organisations with each other.