Improving equitably: welcoming five new provider collaboratives

Amid unprecedented challenges facing the NHS, there’s growing emphasis on how continuous improvement can help. The potential is not just within individual organisations but across provider collaboratives, given their critical role in realising the benefits of system working.

To respond to this, we are pleased to now be launching the second phase of our Provider collaboratives: Improving equitably programme in partnership with NHS Providers. 

This initiative, launched in July 2023 and supported by the Health Foundation and NHS England, aims to bolster provider collaboratives in fostering shared improvement approaches with a strong equity focus, right from the start.

Over the next nine months, we will be working closely with five provider collaboratives, their senior leaders, and board members in a bespoke peer-learning and coaching programme.

It’s early days, as revealed by NHS Providers’ recent survey of senior leaders in provider collaboratives.

We have responded to the needs expressed by senior leaders in provider collaboratives, particularly in terms of addressing health inequalities. 

For the past eight months we have been facilitating learning and identifying actionable insights to create an enabling environment for sustainable, equity-focused improvement.

This journey has included peer-learning webinars that share in-depth case studies of equitable improvement in practice. 

It has also seen the development of a virtual knowledge hub, hosted by NHS Providers, offering key board resources, event recordings and insights.

The five participating provider collaboratives are:

• Acute Hospitals Alliance (acute)
• Humber and North Yorkshire Collaboration of Acute Providers (acute)
• Joined Up Care Derbyshire (all in)
• Mid and South Essex Community Collaborative (community)
• South Yorkshire Mental Health, Learning Disability and Autism Provider Collaborative (mental health)

Our aim is to build on the learning so far in the first phase of the programme, and now to delve deeper into understanding the prerequisites for equitable improvement in provider collaboratives, with a particular focus on the role of senior leadership.

Evidence shows us that senior leadership is a critical success factor in driving improvement. 

Leadership helps with ensuring teams have the resources and capability they need, unblocking barriers, giving space to test and iterate, and role modelling the behaviours needed to build and foster a culture of equitable continuous improvement.

During the second phase, each provider collaborative will be involved in workshops, team coaching sessions, and active engagement with their stakeholders to progress on a strategic priority area. 

By the end of this programme, we anticipate that these collaboratives will have: 

• significantly advanced their shared improvement approaches
• gained a deeper understanding of the board’s role in enabling improvement at scale across organisations
• strengthened their leadership capability.

Throughout the year, we will be synthesising insights with the cohort and disseminating these learnings so that Q members and other provider collaboratives will be able to take up the lessons and changes. 

Keep an eye out for more at from our events, blogs, and resources across Q and NHS Providers. You can watch the peer learning webinars on the NHS Providers website.

Should you have any queries about the programme or wish to share your improvement work with fellow Q members, please don’t hesitate to reach out.