Improvement Reading Room

Delivering Change and Developing Cultures of Learning Across the NHS and Beyond

What makes VMI so innovative in its approach to patient safety?  

Find out how a simple redesign of the incident reporting and investigation form made it easier for University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust to increase incident reporting by 36%. 

Saving Lives Through Sepsis Success

How did VMI facilitate a reduction in sepsis-related deaths and initial diagnosis?  

Find out how a decision to introduce a sepsis box at the Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust resulted in a 60% reduction in time to obtain an initial diagnosis. 

Medication Error Sparks Innovation

How did VMI reduce defects to enhance patient care?  

Find out how VMI developed a scanning system (ScanTran) to improve efficiency, which resulted in a reduction of wrong preparation techniques, from 1.4% to 0.2%.

Surgical Setup Reduction Improves Patient Outcomes

What did VMI do to reduce surgical instrument processing errors?

Learn how the use of build-to-order instrument sets allowed the operating room to reduce the time spent assembling instruments from 24 minutes to 2 minutes.

Reducing Costs, Improving Efficiencies in the NHS through Leadership Development

How did VMI decrease the number of discharge hours and improve patient satisfaction?

See how VMI reduced long-stay patients by 44% at Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital by creating a production board that better visualised what needed to be done.

Improving Patient Flow in Primary Care

What does VMI do to optimise flow in ambulatory settings?

Discover how 11 primary care clinics in North Carolina implemented flow concepts and tools to enable walk-in patients to be seen within 15 minutes.

Embedding a System to Protect Patient Safety

How does VMI support patient safety?

Find out how VMI's implementation of Toyota's "stop the line" process was used to keep patients safer and reduce professional liability claims by 74%.

Achieving Cost Efficiencies While Increasing Staff Engagement

What does VMI do to achieve a sustainable surplus?

Find out how the Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust turned a £100 million deficit into a £19 million surplus by implementing VMI's waste reduction program across all clinical units.

Invigorating Staff and Transforming Culture

What does VMI do to improve staff flow and efficiency?

Find out how VMI helped Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust move from a 'good' to an 'outstanding' rating by the CQC through incorporating a patient-centric focus into a unified management system called SASH+.

Digitizing Workflows for the Better at SASH

How does VMI continue to improve workflows for patients’ benefit?

Discover how VMI will help Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust implement an electronic patient record (EPR) system that will improve staff workflows by, for example, customizing drug charts.