Amid unprecedented challenges facing the national health service, there’s growing emphasis on how continuous improvement can help, 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 established the Provider collaboratives: Improving equitably programme in collaboration with the NHS Providers, and supported by the Health Foundation and NHS England. This initiative, launched in July 2023, aims to bolster provider collaboratives in fostering shared improvement approaches with a strong equity focus, right from the start.

We are pleased to now be launching the second phase of our programme and partnership. 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, with only 5% of respondents reporting substantial progress in embedding shared improvement approaches at the provider collaborative level. Seventeen percent said this is now underway, while 38% said they have only just started on this journey.

Responding to the needs expressed by senior leaders in provider collaboratives, particularly in addressing health inequalities, we have spent the past eight months 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 and the development of a virtual knowledge hub hosted by NHS Providers and offering key board resources, event recordings and insights.

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, 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. We are pleased to announce the five participating provider collaboratives:

• 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)

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 and 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 developed through this programme more widely. Keep an eye out for more at from our events, blogs, and resources across Q and NHS Providers.

To stay updated, please watch out for more blogs on the Q website or NHS Providers virtual knowledge hub.

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.

Authors

Cat Harrison, Strategic Lead, Improvement, NHS Providers

Jen Morgan, Local System Lead, Q

Jen joined The Health Foundation in 2022 and is leading Q’s local system work which includes Q’s partnerships with NHS Confederation and NHS Providers both of which are helping to create the enabling conditions to learn and improve across local systems and places. Over 20 years’ experience working across civil society, education, health, business sectors developing, leading and implementing strategies, programmes and partnerships for systems change and innovation at scale.   She has held board and advisory roles for Royal Society of Arts, Share Action and Cambridge Judge Business School’s Centre for Social Innovation.

Jen holds an MSc in Responsibility and Business Practice – her action learning thesis focussed on ‘Relating for change – the role of relationships in enabling change.’

In her spare time, Jen leads wellbeing nature retreats for NHS frontline workers to help them rest, restore and relax.