Our major programme of work, Providers Deliver, celebrates and promotes the work of NHS trusts and foundation trusts, along with their partners, in providing care. We work to influence and shape the environment in which trusts operate, highlighting the many challenges they face, we also want to ensure the extraordinary work and achievements by trusts and their staff are acknowledged, and that the lessons learned are shared. NHS trusts are held accountable when they fall short, but we should also celebrate their successes, and promote understanding of approaches and ideas that could benefit patients across the NHS. Providers Deliver has an important role to play in this.
The latest report, and number 11 in the series – Providers Deliver: shifting care upstream – highlights how NHS trusts are leading new approaches to ensure patients can get the care they need in the right place at the right time.
The report shows how in the face of a very challenging environment trusts are innovating and adapting to deliver the three key shifts called for by the government.
The 10th report in the series – Providers Deliver: achieving value for money – highlights five trusts across hospitals, mental health, community and ambulance services who are finding new ways to improve services for patients and deliver value for money.
The case studies showcase positive examples of how trusts are making productivity gains in a challenging environment, while continuing to deliver high-quality care.
NHS trusts are determined to do everything they can to help health services to be even more productive but need support from government and national bodies to unlock their full potential for improvement.
The ninth report in the Providers Deliver series – Providers Deliver: enabling wellbeing within trusts – features six trusts from across the sectors who are investing in targeted interventions to support the physical, mental and emotional wellbeing of their workforce. 2022 saw the highest staff turnover rates on record and data from the 2022 NHS staff survey shows over a third of staff feel burnt out because of their work.
The case studies in this report highlight some of the local initiatives trusts have delivered to support their staff through the current challenges of working in the NHS. They demonstrate the benefits, to both staff and employers, of creating working environments which actively promote wellbeing.
The eighth report in the series – Providers Deliver: patient flow – highlights practical steps and innovations to improve patient flow and help people get the care they need, in the right place at the right time. The report features a range of case studies where trusts across the acute, community, mental health and ambulance sectors have developed effective approaches to improve patient flow in the face of unparalleled pressures. These types of approaches will be central to plans to recover core performance standards across the whole health and care system.
The report sets out the wider context behind obstacles to patient flow that cause delays. Work to address them requires a joined up approach based on close partnerships between different types of providers.
Published in November 2022, Providers Deliver: trusts in systems, is the seventh report in our publication series. This report showcases some of the important work being undertaken by trusts to support system working, and the central role they are playing in delivering on the priorities of integrated care systems (ICSs).
Trust leaders have made it a priority to support the setting up of ICSs, and to drive forward improvement through partnership working. They understand that collaboration between system partners can help address immediate pressures and deliver longer term improvements to quality of care and service delivery.
The case studies in this report show how trusts are collaborating and innovating to support system working, as they deal with the increasingly testing operational challenges facing the health and care system.
Our sixth report is the Providers Deliver: tackling the care backlog podcast series, published in May 2022. This series showcased how hospital, mental health, community and ambulance trusts are working in new ways to ease backlogs and, through early intervention, tackle the rising demands for treatment.
With contributions from 30 experts including trust leaders, clinicians and partner organisations, this series shows how trusts and frontline staff are harnessing skills, ingenuity and commitment to make a difference for patients in their work to tackle backlogs.
Our fifth report, Providers Deliver: recruiting, retaining and sustaining the NHS workforce was published in November 2021, and focuses on how trusts are transforming the way they work to respond to the challenges and opportunities facing the NHS workforce.
The challenges presented by the Covid-19 pandemic have forced NHS staff to work in increasingly different ways. Trusts across the country are continuing to push themselves to do the best for their staff, with innovative and future-facing approaches to workforce planning, management, and deployment.
The case studies in this report show how trusts are transforming how they work to respond to the challenges and opportunities facing the NHS workforce, maintaining a remarkable focus on workforce issues despite huge service demand, and recognising the extraordinary hard work, dedication and resilience that their staff have shown.
The fourth report in our publication series, Providers Deliver: collaborating for better care, was published in June 2021 and focuses on ways in which providers are collaborating to address common challenges, provide more integrated care pathways and deliver more sustainable services. The report consists of 14 case studies showing how trusts are at the forefront of work to recognise and respond to the opportunities of joint working.
The third report in our Providers deliver series, Providers Deliver: resilient and resourceful through Covid-19, published in October 2020, explores the incredible and innovative work trusts have done in response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
In many ways the NHS with Covid-19 looks very different to the NHS before the virus first arrived on our shores in February. When the threat became apparent, trusts quickly had to make capacity available for Covid-19 patients while continuing other vital services, and maintain social distancing and effective infection control throughout. In a survey of trusts carried out in May, 99% said they had seen rapid innovation in response to Covid-19.
At a time when the NHS has had to refocus its efforts and resources in response to the pandemic, trusts have led the way in innovating so that they can continue to meet people's needs while meeting the demands placed on them by the virus, and do so safely and effectively. From using technology to roster staff and maintain critical services, to adopting new ways of working to ensure staff are supported and engaged during the pandemic, trusts are clear that to get through the first wave, they had to adapt. This series of case studies shows how they did so to meet the challenges of Covid-19.
Our second report, Providers Deliver: new roles in prevention was published in July 2020 and considered the role of NHS trusts and foundation trusts in prevention.
What our case studies show is that while prevention initiatives in trust settings are dispersed, diverse in scope, and often limited in evaluation, trusts see themselves not only as institutions that treat illness, but are also committed to improving the health of their communities. These case studies are a snapshot of the sector before Covid-19, and as the NHS moves towards recovery, there is an opportunity for the trust sector to contribute to sophisticated, collaborative efforts to improve and maintain population health.
Our first report, Providers Deliver: better care for patients and service users was published in October 2019. It focused on how trusts have responded to feedback from Care Quality Commission (CQC) in a positive and systematic way, encouraging great ideas that have made a difference for patients and service users.
Despite all the well known workforce, financial and demand challenges trusts have faced over the last five years, they have not just maintained, but consistently improved, the quality of health and care services they provide, as measured by the evidence of CQC ratings. The report considered both the leadership approaches and frontline initiatives that underpin improvements in quality. Through eleven case study conversations, it explored some of the frontline work that has contributed to trusts' improvements in CQC ratings, as well as exploring the role of trust leaders in providing an enabling, supportive environment in which this work has been possible.
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