Improvement reports
Over the past decade, the Health Foundation has supported front-line teams working in different settings, from hospitals to care homes, to develop and test approaches to making care safer. We have learned about some of the specific causes of harm, and the factors which have both enabled and hindered improvements in safety.
Inquiries and reports
How five UK trusts built quality improvement capability at scale within their organisations
Academic papers
An observational study from the USA which examined the impact of high-performance work practices on interventions to reduce central line associated bloodstream infections.
Other tools and resources
This blog post offers a set of practical tips for measuring improvement and avoiding the common pitfalls of measurement. The advice is directed at designing and conducting measurement within quality improvement programmes but all of the tips are directly relevant to the measurement of safety improvement.
Other tools and resources
In this narrated slideshow, Professor Mary Dixon-Woods looks at improving the quality and safety of care in hospitals, and suggests that we need to take a three-pronged approach: ensuring we are collecting the right data and interpreting it intelligently, looking at the systems we work in and finally how culture and behaviour impact on quality of care.
Academic papers
Many people are working to improve healthcare quality to bring about safer, more beneficial and cost-effective care for patients. But all too often, there is little evidence to support what they do or demonstrate precisely which improvement projects, methods and techniques really work best.
Discussion papers
This report by the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement presents and reviews evidence about how quality improvement has been implemented in a range of healthcare contexts.
Academic papers
This paper from BMJ Quality and Safety reports on an important national patient safety improvement programme, 'Matching Michigan', that aimed to reduce the incidence of central line infections in intensive care.
Inquiries and reports
The Safer Patients Initiative (SPI) was the first major improvement programme addressing patient safety in the UK. The purpose of SPI was to test ways of improving patient safety on an organisation-wide basis within NHS hospitals.
Academic papers
This academic paper reports the independent evaluation of the first phase of the Health Foundation’s Safer Patients Initiative (SPI).
