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Introduction
The Centre for Change and Innovation was established to spread good practice throughout the NHS.
Patients need a health service where they come first, where artificial organisational boundaries are swept aside, where front line staff are empowered to improve the way they work and where continuous improvement is everyone's business.
Anyone who implements positive change is making a difference and we need to help people celebrate their successes, as well as their attempts at improvement.
Change can be uncomfortable, always requiring effort, it needs courage and application. We need to learn from our successes and should not be afraid to adapt and adopt from other successful projects.
We have a long way to go to meet our goals and more importantly sustain the success that we have achieved so far. In order to make sustainable change, organisations must be able to learn.
The Cancer Service Improvement Programme began with a broad aim of improving patient experience and has narrowed it's focus over the past 12 months to focus on access and 20 High Impact Changes to achieve and deliver the 62 day target from urgent referral to first definitive treatment for patients with suspected cancer.
The programme has taken place against the backdrop of the development of regional cancer networks. It has also imparted skills in process mapping and change for local teams and left behind the Top 20 Actions for Change to be applied where they have not yet been adopted.
The sustainability of the improvements achieved in cancer pathways over the last three years rests with local teams and regional networks. Here there is a longer term objective of strengthening the capability and capacity for improvement within regional networks in the areas of service measurement, queuing theory and a deeper analysis of variation along cancer pathways.
There is a need to really focus the improvement effort within each regional network on those services that are struggling to meet or sustain the 62 day waiting time target. This focus, over the coming months, must combine executive level and front-line clinical engagement.
This report illustrates the impact the Cancer Service Improvement Programme has made on improving cancer services across Scotland and points to the resource library that has been created and that is available to all on the website of the Centre for Change & Innovation at www.cci.scot.nhs.uk
Stephen Gallagher
Associate Director (Programmes)
Centre for Change and Innovation
February 2006
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