Our completed programmes

Our programme of work on developing boards involves a series of projects aimed at exploring the role of boards in improving healthcare; identifying actions boards can take to increase the profile of patient safety; and working with boards to improve their confidence, understanding and governance of safety and quality.

This programme worked in parallel with the Scottish Quality & Safety Improvement in Primary Care Closing the Gap project to build expertise, experience and knowledge about patient safety within general practices and boards in NHS Tayside, and NHS Quality Improvement Scotland.

Our 'Improving patient safety in mental health' programme supported four organisations to improve mental health services and reduce harm for service users.

Our Engaging with Quality in Primary Care programme has helped several clinical teams to understand and apply quality improvement techniques and measure the results. This is turn will add to the evidence base on quality improvement so that others can benefit.

The Engaging with Quality Initiative funded royal colleges and other professional organisations to carry out clinical quality improvement projects, all of which had identified gaps between current and best practice in areas of acute care.

This programme focuses on the relationship between patient flow, costs and outcomes in two NHS hospital trusts. It is examining patient flow through the emergency care pathway and developing ways in which capacity can be better matched with demand, to prevent queues and poor outcomes for patients.

The Health Foundation Leadership Fellows scheme aimed to develop individuals with the potential to become the future leaders of high quality healthcare.

Our Hospital Pathways programme aimed to demonstrate how the health service can achieve its aim of putting the patient at the centre of everything we do. It was run in partnership with The King’s Fund as part of its Point of Care programme, and worked with patients, families, healthcare staff and hospital boards to improve the patient experience.

In 2009 the Health Foundation commissioned the Institute for Health Improvement (IHI), based in the US, to design and test a simple method to identify waste that front-line staff encounter on a day-to-day basis, and report this waste to senior hospital leaders in a way that is useful to them in waste reduction efforts.

This programme aims to reduce the variability in, and improve the flow of patients through, the neonatal and paediatric emergency and planned general surgery pathways, by applying innovative solutions.

The aim of this programme is to support four organisations across the UK to improve the reliability of care in order to reduce harm and raise safety awareness throughout their organisations.

The aim of this programme of work is to improve the safety and reliability of obstetrics and midwifery through a teamwork solution, by developing exceptional clinical leadership skills, team practices and unit-level improvement capability in four UK hospitals.

We are funding a programme to investigate how clinics can be better matched to demand, how waste can be reduced, efficiencies achieved and patient safety improved.

Leaders for Change aimed to equip health professionals working in service improvement with the skills and knowledge to lead change and achieve lasting improvements in patient care.

The Learning to Make a Difference programme set out to enable junior doctors to learn, and be supported to learn, the appropriate skills to improve the quality and safety of care given to their patients.

In October 2009, the Care Home use of Medicines Study (CHUMS), funded by the Department of Health, found unacceptable levels of error in the medications received by care home residents. In response to the report, the Royal College of Physicians, the Royal College of General Practitioners, the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the Health Foundation and Age UK partnered to capture stories from a carer perspective and start work to support the care home sector.

This research programme investigated the effectiveness of web-based feedback to drive quality improvement in the health service.

Our Safer Patients Initiative (SPI) ran from 2004–2008. It was set up to find practical ways of improving hospital safety and to demonstrate what can be achieved through an organisation-wide approach to patient safety.

Our Safer Patients Network is a vibrant, self-sustaining, innovative group of organisations. They test, develop and explore ways of building improvement skills and making healthcare safer for patients.

We supported six outstanding multi-organisational or multi-disciplinary teams (including social services and voluntary sector organisations) to adopt a shared leadership approach designed to develop the project teams’ effectiveness.

Shared Leadership for Change (diabetes) offers leadership development for multidisciplinary teams working across organisational boundaries to provide high-quality care for diabetes patients.

Stroke 90:10 aims to set the pace for the rest of the NHS working in parallel with the government which published its own National Stroke Strategy in December 2007.

There are currently no tested models to assess the business case for quality improvement initiatives. A business case model would help departments and organisations illustrate the potential savings from such programmes and would help individuals to see the full impact of their changes. 

This programme was designed to help SHAs develop their patient safety infrastructure, test different programmes and increase understanding of measures that can be used to spread safety improvement across the SHA region.