NHS Improving Quality was founded on 1 April 2013 and drives improvement across the NHS in England. To meet the challenges that we face across the health and care system, change and improvement are essential and need to be everyone’s business. Bringing together a wealth of knowledge, expertise and experience from across the NHS, we are working to improve the quality of care that people receive by achieving large scale transformational improvement and change.

1. NHS
Improving Quality
An introduction to
NHS Improving Quality

2. NHS Improving Quality was founded on 1 April 2013 and drives improvement
across the NHS in England. To meet the challenges that we face across the
health and care system, change and improvement are essential and need to
be everyone’s business.
Bringing together a wealth of
knowledge, expertise and experience
from across the NHS, we are working to
improve the quality of care that people
receive by achieving large scale
transformational improvement
and change. We will do this by:
• Stimulating new and disruptive
approaches to transformation and
improvement
• Seeking to maximise investment of
money and effort across the system,
so we are all pulling in the same
direction
• Learning from leading edge practice
in the NHS, other health and care
systems and other industries and
making that knowledge accessible
to all
• Building the movement for improvement and safety across the country, making
connections across the system, enthusing and exciting people to engage in change
and improvement
• Providing easy access to the latest evidence base, knowledge and training
programmes, so that improving and leading change remains part of the daily work
of the NHS
• Building commitment to change rather than compliance
• Developing large scale improvement programmes that support local action and are
aligned to the delivery of the NHS Outcomes Framework - making better outcomes
for everyone a reality, faster.
We will work through and with delivery partners so that ideas, skills and knowledge
are widely shared and spread. We will also support the key transformation priority
areas set out by NHS England to help deliver the NHS Outcomes Framework.
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3. Our objectives for 2014/15
Horizons - working upstream to provide
a pipeline of new trends, ideas and
knowledge to help keep improvement
thinking relevant, effective and up to
date.
• Providing thought leadership in large
scale change
• Mobilising for improvement - NHS
Change Day
• Developing The School for Health and
Care Radicals - supporting the
next generation of change agents.
Improvement capability and capacity
building - embedding improvement and
change expertise through science,
knowledge and skills, so that improving
quality and outcomes can be everyone’s
business:
• Developing the science, knowledge and skills infrastructure available across the NHS
to enable improvement and transformational change
• Supporting the implementation of the Berwick recommendations to embed
improvement science in professional training
• Building leadership capability in transformational change and improvement
across the commissioning system and primary care.
Living longer lives - reducing the number of people who die too soon from illnesses
that could have been prevented or treated:
• Delivering elements of the Cardiovascular Disease Outcomes Strategy and
supporting the NHS Health Check programme
• Engaging with clinicians and primary care about the five big
killers (cancer, heart disease, stroke, respiratory and liver disease)
• Improving public awareness of symptoms and early diagnosis of disease.
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4. Long term conditions and integrated
care - improving the quality of life for
people living with long term conditions,
including at the end of their life:
• Supporting the integrated care and
support pioneers to enable better
integrated care
• Transforming end of life care in acute
hospitals and rolling out electronic
palliative care coordination systems
• Developing long term conditions
improvement resources and Year of
Care funding models
• Improving care for people with
dementia, mental health needs and
learning disabilities.
Seven day services - supporting the adoption into practice of evidence based seven
day services at scale and pace across England:
• Supporting and developing new models of delivery
• Working with communities of practice and early adopter sites to support learning
and strengthen engagement to enable whole system change
• Ensuring patients, carers and users are actively engaged in designing and influencing
the right solutions to meet local health needs.
Acute, urgent and emergency care - supporting the delivery of recommendations
from the urgent and emergency care review:
• Supporting the transition of children and young people to adult services
• Helping to develop and deliver a future strategy for rehabilitation services
• Developing evidence of best practice and supporting the transformation of
maternity services
• Identifying best practice in rural and remote areas
• Developing evidence and learning around reconfiguration of stroke services.
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5. Experience of care - engineering social
change, which will result in experience
of care being central to commissioning
and provision of care services,
supporting:
• Patient-led improvement to empower
and support individuals and
communities to get involved
• Patient-centred best practice to
stimulate, learn, share and spread
experience of care best practice
• System improvement to help
commissioners and providers to use
patient experience as a key driver for
service improvement
• Project services to enable patient
experience to inform and influence
national policy design, priorities and
service improvement.
Patient safety - creating a comprehensive, effective and sustainable improvement
system that will deliver a culture of continual learning and improvement in patient
safety:
• Developing the patient safety collaboratives programme and supporting people to
work together locally to address and improve patient safety in their own settings
• Building skills and capabilities in patient safety and improvement science
• Focusing on the actions that can make the biggest difference to patients
• Improving the safe and effective use of medication in people with learning
disabilities post Winterbourne View.
Connections - ensuring NHS Improving Quality is positioned right in the heart of the
NHS and can respond to the unexpected and urgent:
• Developing key strategic relationships and proactively establishing improvement
priorities and common challenges facing the NHS
• Leading bespoke task and finish work, such as delivering capability training
available to all clinical commissioning groups
• Consulting, influencing, sharing ideas and finding partners to deliver
improvement initiatives.
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@NHSIQwww.nhsiq.nhs.uk
To find out more about NHS Improving Quality:
enquiries@nhsiq.nhs.uk
Published by: NHS Improving Quality - Publication date: February 2014 - Review date: February 2015
© NHS Improving Quality (2014). All rights reserved. Please note that this product or material must not be
used for the purposes of financial or commercial gain, including, without limitation, sale of the products or
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Improving Quality
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