Quality Improvement in Mental Health

East London NHS Foundation Trust features as a case study organisation in this report exploring the role of quality improvement in driving up the quality of mental health care. Mental health organisations are beginning to embrace quality improvement approaches, with some promising results.

The report finds that:

• Quality improvement tools and approaches used in the acute hospital sector can be adapted for use in mental health care
• Leaders will need to think and behave differently, devolving decision-making to front line teams and service users who are best placed to find solutions to problems
• Achieving results takes time and requires a long-term commitment to do things differently
• Doing quality improvement at scale requires a support structure to assist frontline teams and to share learning across the organisation and beyond
• Success is most likely when there is fidelity to the chosen improvement method.