Improvement skills needed: turning election pledges into implemented plans

Many of us will be feeling uncertain about the change that might be around the corner, as the new government puts in place its policies for health and care. 

The devolved nations will face different uncertainties, with each country making its decisions on health care while navigating change in Westminster. 

With colleagues from across the Health Foundation, we have set out five priorities the new government should focus on to build a healthier UK.

These are:

1. Investing in health as an asset and a priority for cross-government action
2. Improving people’s health and tackling inequalities
3. Strengthening capacity and resilience in the NHS
4. Transforming care through innovation, technology and reform
5. Reforming and investing in the adult social care system

This includes harnessing the potential of AI, data, and technology, improving the quality and experience of care, and focusing on prevention and delivering more care in people’s homes and communities. 

I suspect that, for Q members and others who have spent our time improving care quality and safety, the issues making the headlines are not new. 

Reducing waiting lists, improving productivity or embedding digital solutions all feature, along with different proposals for how to support care in primary and community settings. 

We know what it takes to deliver the types of changes being proposed. Implementation gets less attention than ideas but how we deliver change will, in large part, determine whether it works. 

The new government takes power in the context of chronic resource constraints and strain on both staff and the populations the sector serves. 

In short, we hear regularly from members that it’s a really challenging environment for inspiring and delivering change, for the same reasons that make such change so urgent. 

As pledges and manifesto commitments made in the next few days and weeks become policy plans, then filter into the day-to-day practices of staff at all levels, we’ll need improvement approaches and expertise. This will help us to find a path to implementation that brings people on the journey and delivers in the long as well as the short term. 

As a community, we can share the particular strengths of improvement approaches and help the sector bring the principles of effective improvement to the ambitious change agenda ahead.

This is all the more important for many of the policy ambitions that span organisations and sectors. This year’s Q Exchange funding programme shortlist demonstrates the breadth of ways Q members are working across silos to bring fresh perspectives to improvement. And our cross-system improvement framework provides a structure for connecting up work that spans places and systems.

This is critical to converting the ideas in manifestos into models of care that work well for everyone. It will be particularly important given the need to address productivity challenges in parallel with other goals. I explored how improvement and Q can help with productivity in a previous blog, linked below.

This is the foundation not just to ongoing progress with reducing waits but also to implementing new ideas. 

We know even fully formed ideas need adaptation when you bring them to a new service setting. There’s set to be big hopes for the potential of technology from all parties. 

With technology increasingly becoming a dimension of any service solution, it is all the more important we connect the skills of those working in digital and service change. 

Finally, as we’re seeing through the many projects with a digital element that Q has now funded and support through Q Exchange and Q Lab, we must demonstrate together the need to invest in effective change, not just the tech.

Innovations introduced can then be effectively adapted and embedded as the context evolves and we learn more. 

We’ll be keeping our feet on the ground and an eye on the horizon here in Q. 

I’d welcome your views on what the future might hold. 

We can be sure that we will need to learn from what’s working and crucially what’s not, connect with others focused on similar priorities, and find a space to share and get support from others. 

Find out about the amazing work Q members are leading, from work on quality management systems to building improvement coaching capability.

Read my blog on how improvement and Q can help with productivity.