Podcast: Leading Improvement in Health and Care

In this first episode of season two, we are exploring how to mobilise change in the context of the ten-year health plan for the NHS.

Thursday 22 May 2025 

The scale of ambition for transforming healthcare means doing things very differently and, in conversation with our guests, we look at which approaches to change are most likely to be effective, and the practicalities of combining change at a national and system level with implementing improvement at the point of delivery. 

Our guests are: 

• Dr Gary Howsam, Chief Clinical Improvement Officer, for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough ICB 
• Dr Annie Williamson, Research Fellow working on health and social care for the IPPR Commission on Health and Prosperity, and a practicing doctor in the NHS with direct experience in improvement work 

In the sixth episode of our Leading Improvement in Health and Care podcast, we look at productivity. 

Thursday 14 November 2024

We explore different system approaches to improving productivity, with two leaders who have been creative and collaborative in working to successfully reduce waiting times.

In this episode we explore different system approaches to improving productivity – our guests are: 

• Dr Peter Scolding, Clinical Director of Stewardship for Mid and South Essex Integrated Care Board, on recognising frontline leadership and developing a stewardship model for system working. 
• Dr Ruth Gray, Assistant Director of Quality Improvement and Innovation at South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust, Northern Ireland, on using system eco-mapping to improve domiciliary care services. 

Peter talks about taking inspiration from the work of Nobel prize winner Elinor Ostrom to improve care pathways across Mid and South Essex, creating improved resource sharing and crucial reductions in waiting lists. 

Ruth shares her story of how her trust released 900 hours of domiciliary care, reducing waiting times significantly. They achieved this through workshops and conversations with stakeholders, staff and patients, that led to the creation of a visual system eco-map, identifying improvement areas for their domiciliary care service. 

In the fifth episode of our Leading Improvement in Health and Care podcast, we look at equity.

Thursday 17 October 2024

We talk to two East London leaders who have been at the forefront of efforts to improve population health, with equity front and centre. 

In this episode we hear about some of the pioneering work being carried out in East London to reduce health inequalities. 

• Dr Guddi Singh is a paediatric doctor and co-founder of the Wellbeing and Health Action Movement (WHAM) – a powerful project bringing together children’s health professionals to fight poverty in clinical practice. 
• Marie Gabriel CBE is Chair of North East London Integrated Care Board and Chair of the NHS Race and Health Observatory, working to bring anti-racism models into healthcare improvement. 

Guddi shares her work as a consultant paediatrician in Newham, East London, where she realised there was a big connection between improving services in the most deprived borough of London* and increasing levels of joy and commitment among the staff working there. She found the best way to engage people in quality improvement, was to start by asking 
what they care about most. 

Marie explores the importance of learning from patients’ lived experiences to improve services and tackle the structural racism that is embedded within those services.  She talks about placing resident participation at the heart of the leadership team, engaging with and listening to local people about priorities for change. 

*According to the Index of Multiple Deprivation. 

Black Maternity Matters is a ground-breaking collaboration tackling the inequitable maternity outcomes faced by black mothers and their babies.

Thursday 12 September 2024

In the UK, black mothers are up to four times more likely to die during pregnancy or in the postnatal period (six weeks after childbirth) than white women.

The systemic biases and structural racism behind the figures is an area where improvement has the potential to make real impact. 

Black Maternity Matters is a ground-breaking collaboration tackling the inequitable maternity outcomes faced by Black mothers and their babies. They’re working to support maternity systems to offer safer, equitable care for all. 

We talk to three of their improvement leaders at: 

• Sonah Paton, Founding Director of Black Mothers Matter, collaborative partner on Black Maternity Matters. 
• Noshin Menzies, Senior Project Manager, Health Innovation West of England 
• Ann Remmers, Maternity and Neonatal Clinical Lead, Health Innovation West of England 

During this episode guests and hosts use the term ​‘racialised as black’, alongside talking about the experience of black mothers, parents, and Black children. The use of ​‘racialised’ acknowledges that white-centric societies have systemically categorised people according to the colour of their skin, or their culture. 

This act of racialising people with healthcare leads directly into these stark differences in experiences of care, treatment, and health. As Esmee Fairburn put it, “‘racialised’ doesn’t define people’s community or identity, but the phenomenon that is happening to them” 

Episode topics include maternal loss and baby loss.

Using different models to improve patient flow through the system can support better patient care – hear from our three experts.

Thursday 8 August 2024

Flow – the way a patient or a service user moves through different stages in the health care system – is vital for good patient care.

In this episode we explore how applying the values and methods that are essential to improving flow, can have a powerful impact on how health and care services can work better for both patients and staff. 

We hear from three great speakers: 

• David Fillingham, chair of the National Improvement Board and chair of Lancashire and South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust is a pioneer when it comes to flow and talks about the importance of improving it. 
• Steve Harrison, Deputy Director of Organisational Development of Sheffield Teaching Hospitals, which has been at the centre of flow improvement, explains what flow means in practice, as well as introducing the Flow Coaching Academy approach. 
• Ailsa Brotherton, Director of Continuous Improvement and Transformation at Lancashire Teaching Hospitals, shares her lessons about successfully turning the academy approach into action. 

Amar Shah, Samantha Allen, Sarah Sweeney and Dr Vin Diwaker on how improvement is both a mindset and a method.

Thursday 11 July 2024

In this special episode, recorded live at NHS ConfedExpo in June, hosts Penny Pereira and Matthew Taylor explore how improvement is both a mindset and a method. For it to work well, co-production and the space to reimagine how services work and are organised, are essential. 

You’ll hear highlights and reflections from Penny and Matthew’s sessions and contributions from an array of guest speakers: 

• Amar Shah, National Clinical Director for Improvement and Consultant Forensic Psychiatrist and Chief Quality Officer at East London NHS Foundation Trust 
• Samantha Allen, Chief Executive, North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care Board
• Sarah Sweeney, Director of Membership and Development, National Voices 
• Dr Vin Diwaker, Interim National Director of Transformation, NHS England 

Annie Laverty and John Drew provide a fresh take on the role of staff engagement in health and care improvement.

Thursday 2 May 2024

Hosted by Penny Pereira and Matthew Taylor, this new podcast spotlights the people leading the way when it comes to improving health and care in systems and services

People are at the heart of improvement. In our first episode, we explore improving staff engagement and morale. Director of patient and staff experience at Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Annie Laverty, talks about using data to understand what matters to staff and enhance engagement. We also hear from John Drew, director of staff experience and engagement at NHS England, who discusses using the NHS Staff Survey to steer improvement and how we might engage people better on productivity.