Table 1

Health Foundation evaluation reports

1. Safer Patients Initiative
a. Safer Patients Initiative phase 1, February 20116 Safer Patients Initiative phase 2, February 20117 The Safer Patients Initiative was the first major improvement programme to start to address the issue of patient safety in the UK. It was complex and large scale in its approach to improvement, recognising that change is needed across whole organisations and systems rather than focusing on individual incidents. Three sources of evaluation and study were used to assess the impact of the programme:

  • An internal programme technical report, using self-reported data from participating sites.

  • Independent outcome-focused evaluations of both phase one and two.

  • An independent research programme addressing broader questions.

b. Learning report: Safer Patients Initiative, February 2011 (an overview of findings from SPI 1 and 2)8
c. The Journey to Safety: A report of 24 NHS organisations undertaking the Safer Patients Initiative (in press)9
2. Leadership programmes (2008–11)
a. What's leadership got to do with it? January 201110 This was an in-depth evaluation of the following Health Foundation leadership programmes:

  • Leaders for Change

  • Leadership Fellows

  • Leading Practice through Research

  • Quality Improvement Fellowships

  • Clinician Scientist Fellowship

  • Harkness Fellowships in Health Care Policy and Practice.

The core enquiry questions for the study were:

  1. What are the links between quality improvement (QI) and leadership behaviour?

  2. Do different types of QI require different leadership behaviours?

  3. What are the lessons for leadership development generally and for the Health Foundation specifically?

b. Evaluation of the Shared Leadership for Change programme, June 200911

  • The scheme was designed to test a hypothesis that provision of structured support to teams to improve functioning, using a model called ‘shared leadership’, would lead to improvements in team processes and patient outcomes. The scheme focused on diabetes managed clinical networks (MCNs).

  • The independent evaluation drew on quantitative and qualitative data to understand processes and outcomes. It sought to be ‘summative’, to establish whether the initiative had worked, and ‘formative’, to help it perform better as it proceeded.

3. Leadership programmes (2003–07)
a. A review of the Health Foundation's leadership programmes 2003–07, October 2008 (an overview of findings from the earlier reports)12

  • This review describes the history, evolution and impact of The Health Foundation's investment in leadership development for clinicians and managers in UK healthcare organisations during 2003–07. It draws on formal evaluations, staff observations and stakeholder views. The Foundation's Leadership Programme developed from a set of disparate schemes into a coherent programme focused on improving the quality of healthcare.

b. Leadership Fellows pilot scheme, September 200613 This report identifies lessons from a formal evaluation of the pilot of The Health Foundation Leadership Fellows Scheme 2003–05. The aim of the pilot was to inform the development of a scheme to identify and develop a cadre of leaders with the potential—collectively and individually—to bring about improvements in the quality of healthcare.
c. Leaders for Change evaluation report, August 200614 The aim of the Leaders for Change scheme is to equip middle and senior professionals who have a leading role in service improvement with the necessary skills and knowledge in managing and implementing change. The main focus of this report is the patient-level outcomes that have emerged from the first two cohorts. The findings are based on data gathered from multiple sources, including award-holder self-evaluation.
4. Engaging with Quality Initiative
a. How do you get clinicians involved in improvement? August 2010 (End of programme report for Engaging with Quality Initiative includes findings from annual programme reports)15

  • The Engaging with Quality Initiative (EwQI) Programme focused on finding ways to engage clinicians in improving quality, setting standards and evaluating outcomes. It was based on the premise that clinician-led improvement work is critical to engaging clinical communities.

  • The external EwQI evaluation was intended to be both formative and summative, and the evaluation team worked closely with the project teams to help them develop their self-evaluations, upon which the external evaluation was built.

b. An Evaluation of The Health Foundation's Engaging with Quality Initiative, March 200916
c. Engaging with Quality in Primary Care: Evaluation of the Leading Improvement Teams Programme, September 200717
5. Engaging with Quality in Primary Care
a. Engaging with Quality in Primary Care: Evaluation of the Leading Improvement Teams Programme, March 201118 Engaging with Quality in Primary Care helped several clinical teams to understand and apply quality improvement techniques and measure the results. Each team had an opportunity to participate in a Leading Improvement Teams Programme to develop leadership, team working and improvement skills. The evaluation considered three areas: communicating with other projects and partners; organising events and activities and assessing the impact of the LITP on the work of projects.