Fostering an improvement culture: Learning from East London NHS Foundation Trust’s improvement journey over 10 years (IHI, 2024)

Summary

This publication describes East London NHS Foundation Trust’s 10 years of experience with learning how to apply quality improvement throughout the organisation and embed a culture of improvement, in partnership with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI).

Content

East London NHS Foundation Trust (ELFT) is a provider of community health, mental health, primary care, and specialist services in England to a population of approximately 1.7 million people across Bedfordshire, Luton, and East London.

This publication reflects on ELFT's 10-year improvement journey and learning thus far on the following areas of focus:

• Origins of Quality Improvement at ELFT
• Develop an improvement-focused Board
• Foster an improvement culture: Senior leadership
• Establish an infrastructure for improvement
• Build improvement capability
• Design and deliver large-scale improvement
• Meaningfully engage people in QI
• Use data for learning and improvement
• Engage external partners in QI
• Develop a Quality Management System

The learning is informed by interviews with nearly 30 people, in a range of roles, who have been part of the improvement journey. ELFT's experience is shared in the hope that it may provide inspiration and ideas for other health systems around the globe who are on a similar pursuit of continuous improvement.