NHS Beneficial Changes Network

NHS Beneficial Changes Network

The Beneficial Changes Network is a collaborative group of health and social care stakeholders and people with lived experience who want to harness and capture the benefits of changes that have taken place through COVID-19 and beyond. The network aims to evaluate these changes and share knowledge to embed the learning of local experiences across the entire health and care sector.

They are reaching out to NHS staff, patients and carers to talk about experiences, ideas and changes that have taken place through COVID-19. Individuals from all backgrounds and job roles are being approached, whether that be frontline clinicians, non-clinical staff or domiciliary workers. Collaboration and insight are also sourced from other external health organisations including NHS Confed, NHS Providers, the Kings Fund, Academic Health Science Networks, and local authorities.

They have received more than 3,000 submissions so far detailing people’s perspective and suggestions for beneficial changes. A team of evaluation experts are currently reviewing these and distilling them using a thematic analysis. Alongside these submissions, they have also reviewed a further 250 documents and pieces of evidence from other health and care organisations. This has already produced a list of over 700 recognised beneficial changes.

There are five consistent pillars of change which have emerged across all stakeholder groups:

1. Patients, carers and communities
2. People and culture
3. Clinical and service
4. System and partnerships
5. Digitally-enabled care

Their growing network now has over 1,000 stakeholders from across health and social care and has used the innovation from frontline teams, the voluntary care sector, and across the wider NHS and beyond to:

• Influence up through national policy and strategy.
• Build a shared platform by creating a community of practice to enable sharing and learning and adoption and spread.
• Support system development through what to take forward as new ways of working in Integrated Care Systems.
• Partnering together across health and care by enabling collaboration with all.
• Supporting innovation by building a movement and empowering teams.
• Distil the high impact changes through evaluation in partnership with national programmes.

They have committed to undertake an annual cycle of open submissions on frontline innovation or improvement. The 2021 round of submissions is now open and it is not specific to changes that occurred during the pandemic, but a general invitation for submissions in terms of transformation, innovation or improvement in care and the delivery of care services.

Find out more and make your submission here before 22^nd October.

If you would like to know more about this work or become a member please email england.improvementsupporthubpmo@nhs.net.

Once you have been given access you can also follow the Beneficial Changes Network on their FutureNHS collaboration platform.