Q Exchange

Waiting times “Wonderlist”

Learning from excellence, we will collate a list of evidence-based change ideas that reduce waiting times in a variety of health settings, encouraging others to implement these ideas locally

Read comments 20

Winning idea
2024

Meet the team

What is the challenge your project is going to address and how does it connect to the theme of 'How can we improve across system boundaries?

Waiting times in the NHS are the longest they have ever been, resulting in delays to treatment, poor patient experience, a widening of health inequalities and more (Health Foundation 2023).

In recent years, many hundreds of improvement projects have aimed to tackle long waits from across the UK (Life QI data analysis, 2024). When successful, often these ideas are not shared or spread beyond the local setting, failing to capitalise on great opportunities to reduce waits and improve care. This learning is often very translatable to similar services across the whole health sector.

Improving across systems means we will need to significantly improve our mechanisms for sharing learning and best practice.

By co-producing a “wonderlist” of the best ideas to help adoption and spread in as many settings as possible. We will be able to measure the benefits by monitoring the spread of the initiatives.

What does your project aim to achieve?

We aim to develop a “Waiting Times Wonderlist” in partnership with providers from across the UK and Ireland. The “wonderlist” is a compilation of successful evidence-based ideas that reduce waiting times for healthcare services.

The purpose of this list would be to encourage providers to adopt/adapt tried-and-tested ideas and to encourage spread nationally.

The Wonderlist will be an online platform housing change ideas from a variety of different health settings. The platform will contain

Webinars with the people who had led the change (recorded)
A “change package” outlining the successful interventions, with pointers to support adoption/adaption. There will be a change package for each of the ideas on the “Wonderlist” all will include guidance relating to tackling health inequalities.
FAQs for each change
A “spreading change” guide

The benefits

Spread of best practice around reducing waits across the UK & Ireland
Reduced silo-working
Opportunity to connect with people facing similar issues

How will the project be delivered?

Phase 1 (months 1 – 3)

Outreach work to identify best-practice improvement work ensuring representation from a range of specialties & settings (acute, mental health, community etc.). We aim to identify at least 10 projects.
Development of website infrastructure to house the “wonderlist” with professional web designers.

Phase 2 (months 4 – 6)

Development of the “spreading change” guide with members of the project team & Q community – capitalising on specialist knowledge.
Promotion of the project and pilot of 1st idea on the Wonderlist, with feedback to ensure the best format and means of communication.

Phase 3 (months 7 – 14)

Rollout of Waiting Times Wonderlist, with a spotlight on a new change idea every 2-4 weeks via webinars & the website
Publication of change packages online & promotion through social media
Ongoing evaluation exploring spread/adoption of change ideas with feedback loop to the original team who led the change

This project is lead by individuals with experience of national co-design and programme management e.g. Quality Coach Programme.

How is your project going to share learning?

The key focus of this project is about learning from excellence and spreading of change ideas to reduce waits across the UK & Ireland. Therefore this is a huge potential to generate valuable learning and insights for the wider system.

Using the Wonderlist website, we will ensure there are means for two-way communication. There will be learning from early adopters of the change ideas will help others – like an online recipe. We will publish the “recipe” to use QI to reduce waiting times in a specific context, including tips and tricks for adapting and using the recipe locally. During & after the sessions, people will be able to comment on this recipe sharing their own tips and tricks and adaptations to help future adopters.

The webinars hosted as part of this project will be held nationally and healthcare professionals, including frontline staff and Q members will be able to benefit.

How you can contribute

Be on the Waiting Times Wonderlist, by sharing any QI work you have been part of that has reduced waiting times.
Provide feedback or comments on this project - we are very open to feedback as this is a core element of the idea!
Share experiences and insights from any similar initiatives you have seen or been part of.
Promote our work wherever possible and encourage others to take part.

Plan timeline

1 Jul 2024	Development of website infrastructure to house the "wonderlist"
1 Jul 2024	Outreach work to identify best-practice improvement work
12 Aug 2024	Identify at least 3 projects to share in 2024
1 Oct 2024	Development of the "spreading change" guide ready for 1st webinar
1 Oct 2024	Promote the wonderlist first webinar
2 Dec 2024	Run first webinar from Wonderlist
9 Dec 2024	Review and evaluate first webinar based on feedback
20 Jan 2025	Promotion through social media and other comms
20 Jan 2025	Run series of webinars and fully launch wonderlist nationally
1 Apr 2025	ongoing evaluation of spread
1 May 2025	We would like to have launched 6 ideas by May 2025
1 Oct 2025	We would like to have launched 12 ideas by October 2025

Comments

Evelyn Prodger 28 Jul 2024

Congratulations on winning!

Community Hospitals are great sites for innovation, often driven by need as they sit between acute and primary care. Please remember them when you are looking for exemplars - we identified many when we did our QExchange study during Covid https://www.communityhospitals.org.uk/quality-improvement/q-exchange-project.html

We have a Community Hospital SIG on this site so please do join or get in contact if we can support or help in any way.

Good luck!
Nuala Hampson (she/her) 10 Jun 2024

Hi Hannah and Sid

this is great project idea. How will your outreach work? How will you ensure you capture all current activity and the best ideas? Will your project include primary care / community setting as well as secondary care?

You might find some of the SusQI projects on our website provide useful examples - here are a couple that I am aware of off the top of my head, but there are probably many more that address waiting times.

Dentistry - https://networks.sustainablehealthcare.org.uk/resources/remote-consultations-dentistry

HIV reviews - https://networks.sustainablehealthcare.org.uk/resources/susqi-case-study-novel-care-pathway-very-stable-hiv-patients

Eye clinics - https://networks.sustainablehealthcare.org.uk/resources/susqi-project-reducing-wasted-appointments-eye-unit

Best of luck with the project!

Nuala
1. Hannah Pearson 10 Jun 2024
  
  Hi Nuala,
  
  Thanks for your comment! We will use the Q Network and our own networks to outreach! We'll collate the information to ensure that the projects are varied to spread learning and good practice so thank you so much for sharing these examples - it would be great to hear about anything else you have in mind to support us with this as we are very much on the hunt for great projects from all areas of healthcare, and I'm sure you have been exposed to many of these at the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare!
Helen Sharma 31 May 2024

Hi Hannah and Sid

This idea looks great! At the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy, we are always on the look out for improvement/innovation examples to share with physios in order to encourage them to adopt/adapt and spread improvement. I would be interested to know how you decided on the methods you are using to do this. Would it be at all possible to have a call with you to understand more to help inform our work? Thank you and good luck with the project!
1. Helen Sharma 12 Jul 2024
  
  Hi Hannah and Sid, I left a message earlier in the chat and it looked like you planned to contact me. I would still like to follow up on this if you are available? Thanks so much! Helen
2. Hannah Pearson 5 Jun 2024
  
  Hi Helen, thanks for your comment! Great to hear you're focussing on spreading improvement work. Would definitely be interested in having a call to discuss methodology and see how we can share learning and examples! I will email you
3. Helen Sharma 31 May 2024
  
  Sorry, what I didn't say is that I'm the Head of Practice Improvement at the CSP and you can reach me at sharmah@csp.org.uk
Magda Golebiowska 30 May 2024

Why don't you just create a group here on Q website for the wonderlist?
1. Sid Beech 5 Jun 2024
  
  Hi Magda. Thanks for the suggestion. The challenge with online groups is that you have to be a Q member to see the resources and much of the information (at least I think that's still the case). We are hoping to involve both members and non-members of Q in this work and so need to make it as easy to access as possible. We may use a SIG to promote the work as well though.
Paul Anthony Gimson 29 May 2024

Hi there,

We utilize a platform called 'SimplyDO' which I think pretty much does what you are asking. Happy to share irrespective of the vote outcome!
1. Sid Beech 29 May 2024
  
  Thanks for sharing Paul. I just had a quick look at the company website out of interest. It looks different from what I can tell based on the healthcare case studies etc., but nice to hear about the great work that you are doing - I had no idea! It would be lovely to pick your brains about how you do the connecting of people on a specific subject matter - I can see you've supported a huge range of topics.
john mortimer 29 May 2024

I did some work in a cross functional ICS in 2019. The aim was to see what happened when we worked in an integrated way. One of the outcomes was a reduction in the reason why people were waiting by reducing repeat demand by 71%. In essence, the waiting list reduced because we focused on tackling the causes of why people were on the list, so that they could receive the support they needed for often complex issues. This also includes working with other agencies, the local authority, and the voluntary sector.

I would be happy to include this work.
1. Hannah Pearson 5 Jun 2024
  
  Hi John, Thanks for sharing that sounds really interesting and would be keen to hear more about it and share some of the insights and learning you gained! Analysing the reasons why people are waiting is such an important part of tackling this complex issue!
Martin Hogan 13 Mar 2024

This sounds like a wonderful idea! looking forward to seeing it develop and happy to be involved.
1. Sid Beech 29 May 2024
  
  Thanks Martin!
Jenny Marshall 5 Mar 2024

At Sheffield Health and Social Care NHS Foundation Trust we are currently embarking on our first QI Collaborative across 9 teams with a focus on reducing waiting lists. We'd love to share our learning with you as part of this project!
1. Jenny Morton 12 Jul 2024
  
  Hi John,
  
  I'd be happy to speak to you about this - my email is jenny.marshall@shsc.nhs.uk
2. john mortimer 9 Jul 2024
  
  Thats great Jenny, what approach or change principles are you applying to do this?
  Thanks, John
3. Sid Beech 29 May 2024
  
  Amazing! Would absolutely lovely to hear more about this and provide an opportunity for sharing the learning from your collaborative and perhaps putting a spotlight on one or more projects that are involved. Thanks, Sid
4. Parya Rostami 27 May 2024
  
  Was just about to write the same Jenny! Great idea team. Will be following this work!