GIRFT has launched a new webpage bringing together its approach to evaluation and learning, showcasing how the programme works to understand and improve its impact across clinical services.
The page highlights how GIRFT uses evaluation not only to assess outcomes, but to generate practical learning that supports continuous improvement across the NHS. It also brings together key evaluation papers and reports from across the programme.
Led by Dr Katrein Savage, GIRFT’s senior clinical content curation manager, the programme’s evaluation and learning function plays a central role in understanding how change happens in practice and how it can be sustained.
Internally, GIRFT brings together national datasets and structured qualitative insight to understand how our initiatives are contributing to improvements in clinical services, how those improvements are implemented across organisations, and why they succeed or face challenges. This enables us to generate actionable learning to support sustainable change across the NHS.
By focusing not only on what works, but how and why change is achieved in practice, GIRFT supports improvements that can be embedded and sustained within local systems.
Examples of internal evaluations include:
The page also features evaluations carried out by independent external organisations, providing an additional perspective on GIRFT’s impact and implementation.
Examples include:
Dr William Gray, GIRFT’s academic content lead, who heads the programme’s research and evaluation team, said:
“As the GIRFT programme has matured, we have increasingly carried out work to examine whether GIRFT interventions, such as GIRFT Academy guidance and clinical lead visits, are associated with changes in key performance metrics across specialties.
It is important to us to use the findings from this work to inform learning across GIRFT programmes and to contribute to the wider evidence base on clinical improvement across specialties.
I am pleased to see this work highlighted on the GIRFT website and look forward to seeing the body of evaluation work growing as this important function develops.”
Dr Katrein Savage added:
“This work is about more than evaluation – it’s about creating a learning approach that helps us understand what works, why it works and how we can continuously improve. By bringing together evidence, insight and experience, we can better support programmes to make informed decisions and deliver meaningful impact.”
