Q draws inspiration from a belief that by collaborating at scale, we can accelerate progress and create lasting solutions to some of the most pressing challenges facing health and care services. As we see from the Q community’s work, many of those challenges call for action that spans organisations: a system response.

Yet the majority of current examples and evidence relate to improvement at service and organisation level. Understanding what leading improvement and implementing means at system level (i.e., across local health and social care organisations’ boundaries) is at an earlier stage. As a community with people from all parts of health and care and plenty of collaboration as well as improvement expertise, this is an area where we have lots to offer and lots to learn together.

With the introduction of NHS IMPACT, which aims to create a shared vision and approach to improvement, coupled with the maturing of integrated care systems in England, we have a great opportunity for this next level of ambition for improvement.

In this context, we are delighted to share that the Health Foundation, NHS Confederation and the Q community have come together to work in partnership. We will be working with health and care systems across the UK to boost their capability to learn and improve collaboratively through a programme of support, which includes:

• A peer learning programme, Learning and improving across systems, for two to four leaders in each system to learn with and from each other, inspiring and equipping them to connect to the improvement ideas and people in their area. This programme is open for applications from 28 November 2023 via NHS Confederation.
• Insight and innovation projects on a few specific complex issues, testing and learning together.
• Practical resources, materials and connections to support implementation in practice.
• Publications, podcasts and events to share learning and support implementation in practice.

Designing a new programme

Over the past year, our partnership offers have been co-designed with the input of health and care system leaders, including Q members.

We recently released Improving Health and Care at Scale: learning from the experience of systems written by Prof Sir Chris Ham and commissioned by the Heath Foundation, NHS Confederation and Q. It contains a wealth of examples of the improvement journeys of systems from England and Scotland.

Through our partnership we are building on the great work already happening to ensure the health sector can take that further, especially when resources are tight and pressures on the sector are great.

We’ll continue to share expertise and insights from Q members across a range of settings to help leaders make the most of what is working already. The evidence tells us that, for members to get the backing they need to implement change at scale, understanding and action from leaders who set the context for improvement work is critical. This partnership will give us greater opportunity to support and influence those in formal leadership roles.

Underpinning this programme is a learning framework, that’s being co-developed with Q’s country partners, other improvement experts, and leaders from across the health and care system.

This framework identifies the different modes of improvement that need to come together to enable sustainable system change. There are 18 considerations that our evidence and experience suggest commonly need attention when leading large-scale change. Our hope is this framework will provide a flexible structure for making progress on the complex issues, that can otherwise be blockers to change.

We are looking for people leading improvement work at a system level to continue co-developing the framework with us. More will be shared with the community as the thinking and work develops.

Get involved

We hope that this new programme will help nurture the collaboration, culture and conditions that will enable Q members to accelerate their improvement work. With greater support, they will achieve ever greater impact within their health and care systems, to address the systemic barriers to healthy lives for all in the UK.

The peer learning offer is particularly aimed at supporting those people with an explicit brief to lead improvement across systems. If this sounds like you, please visit the NHS Confederation home page for Learning and improving across systems.

Check out the further details if you can help connect us to the right people and recommend this programme.

Through this work over the coming years, we’re looking forward to many opportunities to amplify and connect Q members’ work into this partnership.

If you have any questions, please contact us at Q@health.org.uk