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How improvement approaches can make the 10-year health plan a reality
Insights 10 minute read

How improvement approaches can make the 10-year health plan a reality

17 July 2025

  • Improvement

  • NHS architecture

Alongside other organisations supporting healthcare improvement, we've been reflecting on the role improvement can play and welcome the bold ambitions and optimism set out in the 10-year health plan.

Unless local teams are equipped with the licence, tools and connections to implement change well, the 10-year health plan's flagship commendations will take too long and fail to deliver at scale. 

Ultimately it is people - not a plan on its own, that will deliver a health service fit for the future. 

We take a look at five areas in which improvement approaches can turn rhetoric into reality. 

From hospital to community

  • Fostering a shared neighbourhood health vision across local partners and communities. 
  • Providing support for multi-agency place-based teams at multiple levels to build the trust and cooperation required.
  • Developing VCSE partnerships and leaders skilled in understanding and tapping into community assets and process redesign. 

From analogue to digital

  • Capitalising on the transformative potential of technology to reshape services. 
  • Investing in the redesign of processes, schedules and roles ahead of digitalisation. 
  • Co-designing with staff and patients; investing in digital literacy and proactively addressing access barriers. 

From sickness to prevention

  • Building community wealth and health through vibrant partnerships across the whole of the public sector, businesses, VCSE organisations and communities themselves.
  • Promoting a wider use of public health improvement tools, such as asset-based community development.

Quality and productivity

  • Building staff understanding and support for a broader vision of quality.
  • Ensuring the evolved role of the National Quality Board and the Modern Service Frameworks are accompanied by the space and skills for staff to properly feed in and then implement local changes.
  • Increasing the speed of spread and adoption of what works through an NHS wide learning system.

New operating model, organisations and partnerships

  • Helping create a joined-up improvement system to orchestrate national, regional and local initiatives to address challenges.
  • Building analytical capacity and shared understanding to guide the design of new organisations and the re-shaping of services.
  • Creating local quality management systems and workplaces that enable change.

The key challenge now is translating the plan into action. We need to create a gravitational force for improvement that impacts on every part of the service.

Daniel ElkelesChief Executive

Planning must be accompanied by a clear theory of change and leverage a peer-to-peer approach that should underpin a more devolved model.

Matthew TaylorChief Executive, NHS Confederation

For these reforms to be a success, they can’t simply be ‘done to’ the health and care system, they need to be ‘done with’ staff and communities.

Suzie BaileyDirector of Leadership and OD, The King’s Fund

We need to create the curiosity and relationships at multiple levels to scale the most promising local innovations, building an NHS-wide learning system.

David FillinghamChair NHS, National Improvement Board

By putting users at the heart of the implementation process, we can ensure services better meet people’s needs first time.

Jacob LantChief Executive, National Voices

Collaborative improvement approaches support a systematic and inclusive approach to implementation that will inspire staff and actually work.

Penny PereiraManaging Director, Q

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