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.