Health Foundation -
Improvement approaches, which provide a systematic means of bringing about measurable improvements in the quality and outcomes of care for patients as well as care productivity, have been in common use in some health care settings for more than 20 years, often producing impressive results where they are deployed well. Yet approaches to improvement are far from being embedded into the core strategy and operations of every health care organisation or system-wide partnership of organisations. This briefing examines why this is still the case, argues that embedding improvement approaches across all health care settings is now vital, and describes what needs to happen to shift improvement from the margins to the mainstream of health care.