The Health Foundation’s work to improve the quality of healthcare in the UK is organised by five strategic aims. These are: building knowledge, developing leaders, supporting organisations, engaging clinicians and engaging patients.
1. Building knowledge
How do we know whether the quality of our healthcare service is improving? What interventions really work to improve the quality of healthcare? These are just two of the questions The Health Foundation is tackling as part of its strategic aim to build the knowledge base for quality improvement.
We are currently funding the following initiative:
- Quest for Quality and Improved Performance (QQUIP). This initiative will provide independent reports on a wide range of data about the quality and performance of healthcare provided in the UK. For more information, see our research and development section (add link).
Central to our strategy for improving the quality of healthcare is a rigorous programme of evaluation. This enables us to assess the impact of our work objectively and to evaluate the effectiveness of our ideas for improving healthcare quality. We also communicate these results to healthcare decision-makers.
For more information, see Evaluation approach.
2. Developing leaders
The Health Foundation believes that effective leadership is central to improving the quality of healthcare. Through our portfolio of leadership award schemes, we offer coaching and development opportunities to some of the brightest and best in healthcare. Our leadership award schemes are aimed at individuals from a range of professional backgrounds, including, doctors, nurses, managers, researchers and others who have the potential to make an outstanding contribution to improving healthcare.
We currently offer the following leadership schemes:
- Shared leadership scheme aimed at improving the quality of healthcare for people from black and minority ethnic (BME) groups. This new scheme will support teams working on projects aiming to improve health for people from BME populations in their local communities.
- Quality Improvement Fellowships. This scheme offers participants a unique opportunity to spend a year at the Institute of Healthcare Improvement in the US, building their knowledge of quality improvement.
- Health Foundation Leadership Fellows. This scheme offers personalised leadership development to individuals who have the potential to make an outstanding contribution to improving the quality of healthcare in the UK.
- Leaders for Change. This scheme offers an opportunity for health professionals to acquire the skills and knowledge to lead change and achieve lasting improvements in patient care.
- Clinician Scientist Fellowships. This scheme enables participants to pursue academic research alongside clinical practice.
- Shared Leadership for Change. This scheme funds leadership development for teams working across organisational boundaries to provide high quality care for people with diabetes.
- Harkness/Health Foundation Fellowships in healthcare policy. These fellowships offer an opportunity for the rising stars of healthcare in the UK to spend a year in the US, examining its health system and learning more about healthcare policy.
- Leading Practice through Research. This scheme enables health professionals to undertake research projects to improve the quality of patient care or the health of the UK population.
For more information, see Leadership schemes.
3. Transforming organisations
Ensuring the safety of patients is one of the most important challenges facing healthcare today. Research from around the world suggests that one in ten hospital patients experience an incident that puts their safety at risk, and that about half of these could be prevented. Ensuring patient safety is therefore one of the most pressing tasks that need to be tackled to improve the quality and performance of healthcare.
We are supporting healthcare organisations to improve the quality of healthcare services through the following initiatives:
- Safer Patients Initiative – 2006. We have recently launched a second phase of this scheme, which aims to make hospitals safer for patients.
- Safer Patients Initiative – 2004. This highly successful scheme ensures that patient safety is tackled in order to improve the quality and performance of healthcare.
For more information, see Safer Patients Initiative.
4. Engaging clinicians
Improving the quality of health services relies on the participation and commitment of people working at every level of healthcare. Research has shown that while clinicians in the UK are attentive to the need to improve the quality of healthcare, they are not fully engaged in how to make this a reality. Our aim is to encourage clinicians to close the gaps between current and best clinical practice. The activities we support include developing clinical information systems to enable quality to be measured and implementing interventions to improve quality.
We are currently funding the following initiatives:
- Engaging with Quality in Primary Care. This new scheme funds nine projects focussing on clinicians in primary care.
- Engaging with Quality Initiative. This scheme aims to improve the quality of clinical care by engaging clinicians in quality improvement.
For more information, see Demonstration projects.
5. Supporting patients
Health systems throughout the world are searching for ways of making their services more responsive to patients. In the UK, one of the biggest policy challenges is how to find new and effective ways of delivering care so that patients are fully involved in protecting and managing their own health.
We are working on the following initiatives to support sustained innovation in the engagement of patients in their treatment and care:
- Co-creating Health - a self-management initiative. This is an exciting new initiative, designed to transform healthcare for people with long-term conditions.
- Quality Improvement in Malawi. We are working with leading international experts on a three year programme that aims to improve the quality of healthcare for mothers and babies in Malawi.
For more information, see Demonstration projects and International work.