News & Updates
A collaborative approach to reducing inpatient bed occupancy in Bedfordshire & Luton
7 February 2024
By Lucy Brewer (Senior Improvement Advisor) Bedfordshire and Luton Adult Mental Health provide a wide range of community and inpatient services across these areas. These services include crisis teams, community mental health teams (CMHTs), and inpatient mental health wards. As with many services across the country, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic saw an increase… Read More
Making the experience for new staff better
11 October 2022
by Trust wide new starter project team Team members across people and culture, digital, the registration authority and an end user at ELFT have been working together to apply quality improvement methods to improve the expereince for all new staff starting at ELFT. New starters have frequently expressed frustration that there was a delay in… Read More
Using Flow charting at Newham Centre for Mental Health to understand demand and capacity issues and flow
11 October 2022
By Clarissa Sørlie, Improvement Advisor All the adult mental health inpatient units across the organisation are working on improving inpatient flow. They are trying to manage high demand and make sure people who require hospital admission have access to beds and receive care close to home. The units have been using improvement methods to help… Read More
Using Flow Diagrams to optimise flow
5 October 2022
On the 3rd of October, the third Optimising Flow QI learning session was attended by representatives from 18 teams across the Trust, who came together to share learning and receive coaching for their improvement work. All teams are working on issues related to improving pathways of care and services for services users and staff. The… Read More
Improving flow across inpatient wards in Newham
28 September 2022
In this short 5 minute video, Ward Managers Alice Phillips and Mark Fassihi from Newham Centre for Mental Health describe their approach to improving flow using QI methods on Ruby Triage ward.
Demand and Capacity in an ADHD Team
27 September 2022
By Laura Ann Roughan & Jamie Stafford The aim of the project was to reduce the average length of time from initial referral to CAMHS to ‘ADHD assessment feedback’ to 12 weeks. Please follow the link below for the full article. https://qi.elft.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Demand-and-Capacity-in-an-ADHD-team.-L.A-Roughan-and-J.-Stafford.pdf
How Newham CAMHS are improving flow in their system to reduce waiting times for young people
27 September 2022
By Carole Green, Improvement Advisor, ELFT QI In this short 5 minute video you can hear how Newham CAMHS are using QI to improve flow in their system. General Manager Fiona Stockley shares what the team are working on and why it’s important, how they have been using some simple tools to understand their system… Read More
Using Time Trackers to Understand Staff Capacity to Improve Flow
27 September 2022
By Candace Sinclair, Improvement Advisor In this 5-minute read, learn how the Integrated Learning Disability Service (ILDS) team in City and Hackney have used time trackers as a tool to better understand staff capacity. The ILDS in City and Hackney have been working on an Optimising Flow project to reduce the time it takes for… Read More
Bedfordshire Community Heath Services: Occupational Therapy Demand and Capacity Quality Improvement (QI) Project
26 September 2022
By Sharon Eplett (Head of Quality and Performance) and Nicola Ballingall (Senior Improvement Advisor) Bedfordshire Community Health Services (BCHS) have made significant improvements to their physiotherapy and Occupational Therapy waiting times. Find out about the methods they used in this interview with their QI Coach, Sharon Eplett. Nicola: How have you built momentum for the… Read More
The ABCD of Optimising Flow: Activity, Backlog, Capacity, and Demand
26 September 2022
By Nicola Ballingall, Senior Improvement Advisor This 12-minute video is an introduction to some of the basic concepts behind optimising flow: activity, backlog, capacity, and demand. It includes tips on how to match demand and capacity, such as by reducing the batching, queues, and bottlenecks in the system.
Using QI to reduce therapies waiting lists in the Tower Hamlets Extended Primary Care Teams (EPCT)
20 September 2022
by Carlos Santos, Improvement Advisor and Gemma Blake-Ryder The Tower Hamlets Extended Primary Care Teams (TH EPCTs ), working across four localities in Tower Hamlets, have come together to start an amazing piece of improvement work, aiming at reducing the size of waiting lists for Therapies by 12% by December 2022. To achieve this, the teams… Read More
