Verita has recently completed an independent review of a new accelerated service improvement programme developed by a mental health trust in London.
Accelerated improvement
The trust developed the intervention programme to improve the performance of one of its community mental health teams. One year on, it wanted to know whether it could be used to improve the quality of patient care in other parts of the trust.
Ed Marsden and Tariq Hussain from Verita interviewed members of the trust's intervention team and the community mental health team. They also analysed the CMHT's performance data before and after the intervention.
Ed Marsden describes what they found: "We were able to demonstrate that the year-long programme had transformed the CMHT's performance, with both patients and staff gaining from the intervention.
"We recommended that the trust used the improvement programme more widely, but in a more structured way. We put forward a scaled approach for programme improvement, with 'a menu of interventions' for the trust to choose from depending on the problem to be tackled and the level of concern."