Practical guidance to support trusts in England to replicate Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust’s successful WAVE improvement programme is now available for download.

The Working to Achieve Value and Excellence (WAVE) programme has been running at NUH for six years and has been proven to improve the quality of services for patients, increase productivity, reduce risks and generate financial savings.

GIRFT has now worked with the trust to develop a practical guide to implementing the WAVE methodology, providing step by step advice, links to tools and resources and checklists to enable other organisations to replicate the methodology across all specialties.

The NUH WAVE programme brings together a multidisciplinary team of clinicians, operational managers, service improvement and finance leads with the aim of reducing waste, increasing productivity and improving the quality of the services provided.

The trust has a rolling list of services that participate in the programme, generating an agreed list of improvement ideas alongside a fully worked up plan in the trust’s project management system for the priority projects. The WAVE process has the full support of the trust executive team, which has been essential to ensuring action is taken to resolve issues and facilitate change.