Blog - Six key lessons from the NHS and Virginia Mason Institute partnership (16 October 2022)

Summary

Since 2018, Nicola Burgess has led a team from Warwick Business School that evaluated the partnership between the English NHS and the Virginia Mason Institute in the USA. The partnership aimed to implement a systematic approach to quality improvement (QI) in five English NHS trusts and learn lessons about how to foster a culture of continuous improvement across the wider health and care system. In this blog, she summarises six key lessons from the evaluation report for health and care leaders looking to build a systematic approach to QI.

1. Build cultural readiness as the foundation for better QI outcomes
2. Embed QI routines and practices into everyday practice
3. Leaders show the way and light the path for others
4. Relationships aren’t a priority, they’re a prerequisite
5. Holding each other to account for behaviours, not just outcomes
6. The rule of the golden thread: not all improvement matters in the same way

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