- Date published
- December 2005
- Pages
- 46
- Download publication [323kb PDF]
Achievements and performance
The calendar year 2005 was the first year of The Health Foundation’s five-year strategic planning period. Therefore, this assessment of performance consists of an evaluation of achievements specifically in relation to the 2005 Business Plan. This year marked the beginning of a journey to develop a stronger understanding of the field of quality improvement in healthcare; to launch new demonstration projects; and to consolidate and develop our programming to align it with our new strategic aims.
In many respects, 2005 was a highly successful year. Buoyed up by better than expected returns from our invested endowment, we spent £21.5 million, or 20.6 percent more than in 2004. The Board was able to approve funding for four major, multi-million pound ground breaking initiatives.
We made two additional awards totalling £1 million in our Engaging with Quality Initiative designed to encourage clinical professionals to set up and run systems for measuring and improving the quality of care. In addition, we planned to spend a further £2.55 million for a second wave of awards to take place in 2006, with a specific focus on primary care.
We announced a major new £2.5 million research initiative to provide independent reports on the wide range of data about the quality and performance of healthcare provided in the UK. Called the Quest for Quality and Improved Performance (QQUIP) and led by a team of internationally renowned academic researchers, this five-year initiative will provide coherent and accessible information on where healthcare resources are currently being spent, establish whether they provide value for money, and how interventions in the UK and around the world have been used to improve healthcare quality.
We approved expenditure of £4.85 million for a second Clinician Scientist Scheme, on the back of an evaluation of our first such scheme, which showed that our exisiting Clinician Scientists had successfully leveraged £4.2 million in additional research funding from 29 funding bodies.
We approved expenditure of £2.4 million for a scheme to reduce maternal mortality and improve neonatal health in Malawi. A consortium of three organizations will deliver the scheme, working closely with Malawians. The consortium includes the Women and Children First, a London based NGO; the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, Cambridge, Massachusetts; and Liverpool Associates in Tropical Health, Liverpool. Work will commence in early 2006.
Meanwhile, our £4.3 million Safer Patients Initiative, which was started in 2004, began to bear fruit. The four hospitals participating in the scheme began work early in 2005, and by the end of the year were already demonstrating measurable improvements in performance, including reduced mortality rates, decreased lengths of stay in intensive care, and reduced expenditure on drugs.
Other highlights from the year include the growing number of leadership award holders supported through our numerous schemes. Most importantly, we launched our ‘Shared Leadership for Change’ award scheme, which supports leadership development of clinical teams rather than individuals. We also clarified the ten key principles we are testing through our leadership programme, including whether there is a direct relationship between leadership development and the quality of patient care.
In 2005, we achieved expenditure of £21.5million against a budget of £25.4million. We outline below which 2005 business objectives were accomplished, as well as where we fell short of expectations, in relation to each of our strategic aims. Where possible, we have also commented on how and why plans were changed during the year.
As a learning organisation, we regularly assess initial progress against our strategic plan. Having invested consciously in evaluating our programmes, and based on early evaluation findings, we in some instances took corrective actions with our programmes. In addition, we made modifications or scaled back our ambitions because of several other factors: programme development proved to be more complicated and took more time than originally anticipated; new evidence caused us to rethink our plans and delayed decision-making; in some cases the quality of applications was lower than expected so fewer awards were made; and we experienced problems in recruiting staff to fill key positions.
Overall, 2005 was extremely productive and set us on course to meet our strategic objectives. Our work to produce new initiatives and manage a growing workload is beginning to build networks and develop greater capacity for quality improvement throughout the healthcare systems of the UK. Plans are now in place to establish better quantitative and qualitative indicators from which to judge overall performance and the impact of our programme investments for the full 2005-2009 strategic period.
