Healthcare Case Study: Process Improvement at Bolton NHS Foundation Trust
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Making Improvement "What We Are Not What We Do"
In 2004, Bolton NHS Foundation Trust was facing challenges faced by many healthcare organizations across the United Kingdom: high rates of mortality, hospital infections, financial difficulty, and staff dissatisfaction.
Despite examples of good practice in certain areas of service, there was no coherent system to address the challenges and make sure that examples of best practice were spread.
Introduced in 2005, the Bolton Improving Care System (BICS), a process improvement programme based on Lean principles, aimed to change that. Under the leadership of the then-Chief Executive, David Fillingham, BICS was established to improve patient care by "reducing wasteful processes in the system (e.g. duplication, errors and work-round solutions) in order to provide safe and high quality services."
Since its inception, BICS has resulted in major improvements for the Trust including reduced mortality rates, shorter stays for patients and many other initiatives which have ultimately saved lives.
For their work and results achieved to date the company won PEX Network’s 2012 European award for Best Mature Business Process Excellence Programme (running for longer than 2 years), a pan-European award judged on operational and business results as well as clarity in execution throughout and sustainability of change.
Download this case study to find out more about this award winning programme, the sucesses and challenges along the way, and find out the lessons learnt to date.
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