Consultancy and Quality Improvement

Our health and social care experience programmes, toolkits and surveys are proven to deliver insights that can be used to drive targeted quality improvement. But simply measuring people’s experiences is not enough: measurement is necessary, but needs to be backed by improvement work that focuses on understanding and using its findings. This is where our consultancy and quality improvement offer comes in.

Quality improvement in healthcare

Working with Picker means you benefit from our expertise and consultancy to use insights in the most effective way, laying the groundwork for a culture of continuous improvement. We offer different tools and services, from improvement workshops and organisational data presentations to Board facilitation and action planning. At the heart of each is a focus on communication, education, and community-building.

The most successful improvement programmes are those that take a strategic approach: we provide guidance on where to focus your efforts, and also on how best to communicate this to staff in a way which is clear, engaging and actionable.

One of our most successful programmes has been the Patient and Staff Experience Review; a tailored programme of work that enables you to take control of your patient experience data and use it more effectively. Each Experience Review is a four-stage process:

Review

Review patient and staff data sources to understand experience at all levels of the organisation. This stage is about understanding what the experience data is telling you: what to celebrate and learn from and where to focus improvement.

Analysis

Understand what your patient experience data is telling you, including staff engagement and buy in. Measure the impact of any existing patient experience initiatives.

Staff engagement

Work with employees to understand the challenges faced and the areas of support required, identifying opportunities to use experience research data effectively.

Reporting and implementation

Delivery of a healthcare quality improvement report and onsite presentation of findings at your organisation. We also provide continuing implementation, guidance and support.

Quality Improvement Workshops

We offer our clients the opportunity of a presentation of their quantitative & qualitative health services research findings. There is also the opportunity to request additional action planning workshops and wider improvement initiatives.

We offer regional/national insight workshops for all the national survey programmes in England. These provide dedicated time for NHS providers and commissioners to better understand their results, identifying areas for action. Attended by colleagues from across the NHS, the events provide opportunities to network, share, and plan quality improvement initiatives.

Our facilitation sessions and workshops are used at all organisational levels including non-executive boards, senior management teams, frontline staff and governors.

Always Events®

Always Events® are aspects of the patient experience that are so important to patients and family members that health care providers must aim to perform them consistently for every individual, every time. These can only be developed with the patient firmly being a partner in the development of the event, and the co-production is key to ensuring organisations meet the patients’ needs and what matters to them.

An Always Event is a little change that makes a big difference, such as the #hellomynameis campaign for more compassionate care: identifying and insisting on the need for staff to introduce themselves when approaching a new patient, providing a moment of basic human connection – often at a challenging time.

These small changes can make a big difference: our work with Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust highlighted that families of child cancer patients were keen to have information on their child’s blood count results first thing in the morning, as that information would have a significant impact on their child’s treatment routine for that day. The point of care team consequently decided to develop a Patient Information Update document and worked with families to establish what information should be included. It is now an Always Event that families receive a daily update, delivered to their child’s bed, and including not only blood test results but that day’s treatment plan and the name of the nurse looking after them.

We’ve worked with many trusts to improve areas of patient care, which can be seen in our Quality Improvement case studies and infographics.

For more information on Always Events and how you can get involved, visit NHS England.