The redesign practices and capabilities of NHS Trusts in England: a snapshot study

摘要

The ability of any healthcare system to improve outcomes for patients through the use of information technology or through process improvement depends very much on the implementation of process redesign methodologies. In this paper, the redesign capabilities of 29 UK National Health Service (NHS) Trusts are assessed to gain an insight into the current situation within the NHS as a whole. It was found that very few individual organisations possessed internal capability to redesign processes effectively. Furthermore, in many organisations, there was little integration of redesign and improvement strategy with the strategy of the organisation as a whole. Those organisations that were successful had probably developed a capability over many years. Some Trusts had performance levels poor enough to require emergency measures to remedy the situation. These sites had actively recruited people with skills to introduce a redesign capability. The paper discusses the barriers to the development of a redesign capability.