In April 2022 Amanda Pritchard, NHS Chief Executive asked Anne Eden, Regional Director for the South East to lead the Delivery and Continuous Improvement Review. The Review considered how the NHS, working in partnership, can both deliver effectively on its current priorities and continuously improve quality and productivity in the short, medium and long term.

The Review was conducted over 7 months and involved more than a thousand people, including patients, clinicians, improvement specialists and leaders from partner organisations (including local government), as well as colleagues from a range of integrated care systems and NHS organisations.

The Review’s recommendations were consolidated into three actions, which were endorsed by NHS England’s Board:

1. Establish a national improvement board to agree a small number of shared national priorities on which NHS England, with providers and systems, will focus our improvement-led delivery work
2. Launch a single, shared ‘NHS improvement approach’
3. Co-design and establish a Leadership for Improvement programme.

NHS IMPACT (Improving Patient Care Together)

NHS IMPACT is the term we are using for the new single, shared NHS improvement approach. Five components form the ‘DNA’ of all evidence-based improvement methods, which 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.

We will work in partnership across integrated care systems to support NHS organisations to embed a quality improvement method aligned with NHS IMPACT. This will inform the ways of working across services at every level: primary care networks, local care networks, provider collaboratives, providers, integrated care boards and NHS England.