Clinical Improvement Programme Report

Amongst the key identified drivers for our Clinical Improvement Programme have been:

  • Poor and deteriorating cancer health outcomes, and
  • An increasing elective ‘backlog (waiting list) significantly impacted upon by the recent ‘pandemic’.

Against this context, and to support delivery against these challenges, nine Clinical Networks were identified and established, with a further two added during the course of 22-23. These are:

Each clinical network has met monthly and is led by an appointed Clinical Lead supported through the BCPC PMO by a project manager, and in some instances an operational manager to deliver agreed priorities. In addition, monthly strategic support has
been provided to help focus their work and ‘unblock’ arising issues through a regular ‘2:1 meeting’ with the BCPC Managing Director and Chief Medical Officer.

Early on, space was provided to each clinical network to develop relationships and build trust across the specialty within the Black Country, with each clinical network encouraged to develop a mixture of ‘quick wins’ and ‘longer term transformative’
priorities that would support, contribute, or deliver improvements in response to the challenges being faced (e.g. cancer health outcomes, and the elective care ‘backlog’).

To support the development of these priorities, each network hosted an ‘away day’ for their specialty to engage and discuss ideas, which were also supplemented by the quarterly Clinical Summits and the monthly clinical network meetings.

The initial set of c.60 priorities (a mixture of 30 short term tasks, 17 critical milestones and 13 projects) across the clinical networks were organised around objective and three key goals, as follows:

Objective – Improving patient care and experience through:

  • Improving access – supporting recovery and restoration.
  • Quality – equity and health inequalities through standardisation of care and reduction of unwarranted variance.
  • System resilience and transformation – new models of care, system strategic developments and enhancing workforce recruitment and retention.

More Information

You can read more about the Clinical Improvement Programme in the BCPC Annual Report 2022-23.