Enabling Quality Improvement in Mental Health

A growing number of mental health providers in the UK are embedding QI across their organisations, with encouraging results. As these trusts embark on and progress along their improvement journey, there are many challenges to overcome. Appropriate use of technology can be a powerful enabler in tackling these challenges.

Life QI accelerates the improvement journey by enabling capacity development, project execution and informed decision making. Successful programmes of work led by leading authorities, such as the Royal College of Psychiatrists, and by trusts, like ELFT demonstrate its successful application. Find out why an increasing number of NHS trusts are turning to Life QI as their improvement technology platform of choice.

Executing Improvement Projects

Once staff have been empowered to act and trained in QI, it’s time to execute on their ideas – effectively, consistently, and at scale. Life QI enables organisations to run more successful improvement initiatives that complete quicker by:

•	Consistent approach and the tools to get the job done
•	Collaborative workspace to bring the team together
•	Learning from others to accelerate improvement
•	Complete projects quicker, with greater success

Case Study

Reducing Restrictive Practice nationwide

The National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health (NCCMH), part of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, uses Life QI to run its national improvement collaboratives. One such collaborative involved 38 MH wards around England working to reduce the use of restrictive practices.

Through the use of Life QI to facilitate individual team work and cross-Trust sharing, 24 of the wards realised reductions ranging from 25% to 100% in one of more of the core measures. Overall this equated to a 15% reduction in restrictive practices nationwide within 18 months.

NCCMH are also working with MH Trusts to drive collaborative improvement in areas such as Sexual Safety, Suicide Prevention, Enjoying Work, and Advancing MH Equality.

Case Study

ELFT use Life QI to drive QI at scale

East London NHS Foundation Trust (ELFT) are well known as a leading improvement focused organisation. They have developed widespread improvement capability across all areas of the trust allowing them to reach and maintain an Outstanding CQC rating.

The Trust uses Life QI to facilitate QI projects across all Directorates, providing consistency of application and complete oversight. This in turn ensures complete and accurate reporting which allows for widespread learning and informed decision making maximising the impact of their improvement work.

Case Study

LPT 'Step Up To Great' Campaign

The Leicestershire Partnership Trust (LPT) have embraced flexible, adaptable and virtual learning/coaching to reach out to staff and stay connected through Life QI. Their ‘Step Up To Great’ Quality Improvement Plan is a high-level document that sets out LPT’s intentions to deliver excellent care every time to every patient.

They use Life QI as the central repository of QI work taking place across the Trust as it provides a systematic and time saving way of tracking work. Customised dashboards enable LPT to report on QI both as a whole Trust and at a directorate level and to track QI in line with the CQC standards.

Case Study

CNWL empowers staff and increases QI capacity

Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust (CNWL) is a large provider of services across a person’s life span, in community, mental and specialist services. They launched a QI programme as a way to implement a standardised approach to improvement across the organisation and build on sharing and spreading improvement.

Life QI plays an important part in supporting CNWL's ongoing journey to bring services and teams together with an aspiration of providing the highest quality of care. One of the achievements for CNWL was seeing 25% of all projects with service user and carer involvement, which has been one of the Trust’s main priorities.