NHS IMPACT (Improving Patient Care Together) has been launched to support all NHS organisations, systems and providers at every level, including NHS England, to have the skills and techniques to deliver continuous improvement.

NHS IMPACT is a single improvement approach to support organisations, systems and providers to shape their strategy underpinning this with continuous improvement, and to share best practice and learn from one another.

It will inform the way we work across services and create the conditions in which continuous improvement is the “go to” method for tackling clinical, operational and financial challenges.

Continuous improvement methodologies are not the same, but they are linked together by some key principles.

NHS IMPACT’s five components form the ‘DNA’ of all evidence-based improvement methods, these principles underpin a systematic approach to continuous improvement:

1. Building a shared purpose and vision
2. Investing in people and culture
3. Developing leadership behaviours
4. Building improvement capability and capacity
5. Embedding improvement into management systems and processes

When these five components are consistently used, systems and organisations create the right conditions for continuous improvement and high performance, responding to today’s challenges, and delivering better care for patients and better outcomes for communities.

Our overarching ambition is to enable the creation of an NHS in which every organisation, including NHS England, has the leadership with the leadership behaviours, the capability and the capacity, to enable our staff to solve the problems that matter to them, their patients and their populations. Working with their partners to deliver better life chances and better outcomes for those patients.

It’s important that NHS IMPACT is applied holistically, and we recognise that organisations, systems and providers are at different stages of their journey. NHS IMPACT may take time to be deeply embedded for those who are new to this way of working.

As NHS IMPACT shapes and develops more resources to support you will become available.