Dear Candidate

We are delighted that you are interested in working for Healthcare Improvement Scotland in a key leadership role within our Improvement Hub.

Healthcare Improvement Scotland has a strong track record in the field of quality improvement and is probably best known for the Scottish Patient Safety Programme which is now working across acute hospitals, mental health, neonatal, maternity services, paediatrics, general medical services, dentistry, community pharmacy and, most recently, the care home sector.

A commitment to improvement is at the heart of everything we do in Healthcare Improvement Scotland. As the lead organisation in Scotland for improving the quality of health and care we provide a unique combination of support to health and care providers which includes independent quality assurance, improvement support and evidence based guidelines and standards.

Building on this strong reputation, in April 2016 we launched a new improvement resource, called the Improvement Hub (or ihub for short). This resource provides support for the redesign and continuous improvement of Health and Social Care Services across Scotland (which include health, social care, third sector, independent sector and housing organisations). With an impressive range of national improvement support programmes, we aspire to be at the leading edge of both thinking and practice in the application of quality improvement in health and social care.

We are now looking to recruit to two key leadership posts:

The first is a Head of Quality Improvement which leads our work in developing quality improvement infrastructures across Scotland’s Health and Social Care system. The Unit also leads work across the ihub on the development of our QI approaches including the development of our spread and scale-up mechanisms and our approaches to evaluating our national improvement programmes.

This is a new unit following an internal restructure based on our learnings from the first 18 months of our operations. Part of what makes our work both interesting and exciting is the evolving nature of both our context and offerings.

As head of the unit you will work with your teams and key stakeholders to develop the overall offering further, ensuring the best use of our resources to deliver world class support for the development of Quality Improvement Infrastructures across Scotland.

We are looking for someone with strong knowledge of Quality Improvement Methodologies/Improvement Science coupled with excellent relationship management and interpersonal skills and a recognition that whilst developing strong QI infrastructures in organisations is a necessary part of the conditions for success, it is not on its own sufficient.

The second is a Head of Improvement Support which leads our national improvement programmes in mental health, primary care and prisoner healthcare.

We have a good track record of providing support in the use of quality improvement methodologies in Mental Health through the world renowned Scottish Patient Safety Programme for Mental Health, our work to support improvements in access to psychological therapies, and in access to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services.

We are now progressing plans to build on this existing portfolio of improvement work by developing a national programme focused on supporting the local redesign of services to deliver a more holistic and joined up approach to children’s and young people’s mental health and well-being.

Primary care is a key component of successful health and social care integration and our role is to support staff in the development of their knowledge and ability to use quality improvement and service redesign approaches to deliver high quality primary care. Building on the success of the Scottish Patient Safety Programme in Primary Care, and on the back of the new GP contract, we are now expanding our role and involvement. Supporting GP clusters to make effective use of quality improvement methodologies, we will also provide support to services across Scotland to develop and embed new models of primary care.

We run the national prisoner healthcare network which is a well-established approach to supporting collaboration between Scottish Prison Service and the NHS to deliver high quality healthcare in prisons. The health and justice collaboration board, established within the last year by Scottish Government, is leading further development of the national approach to prisoner healthcare and we are playing an important role, working with the board and others to explore how we strengthen quality improvement work in prison healthcare.

To help us deliver on the above, we are looking for someone with experience in designing and delivering large scale complex improvement programmes at regional or national level, coupled with excellent relationship management and interpersonal skills.

All things considered, this is an exciting time to join Healthcare Improvement Scotland. The health and social care landscape in Scotland will change dramatically over the next few years and these roles will offer you the opportunity to play your part in building safe and high-quality health and social care services for people in Scotland.

I wish you well with your application.

Ruth Glassborow
Director of Improvement Support and ihub