Hibernating quality improvement programmes

Q’s partners at Healthcare Improvement Scotland have created a draft guidance document on the hibernation of programmes. It outlines processes and good practice to close programmes down well, so that they are easier to get back up and running when the time is right.

This guidance was prepared to support health and social care organisations to plan and respond to the impact of Covid-19 on quality improvement (QI) programmes. 

However, the steps outlined for hibernating QI programmes to make it easier to then reinstate them later are useful for any circumstances where a programme needs to be paused.

This guide has been provided as a working draft and shared as a Word document, allowing you to edit and customise it for your teams.

This guide is for those running improvement programmes who may be redeployed and need to close down their QI work until they are able to return to it.

This guide was developed by Health Improvement Scotland working in partnership with NHS Lothian, NHS Lanarkshire, NHS GG&C and NHS Grampian.

Staff shared their thoughts in this working draft on the process for closing down QI programmes, in the spirit of learning together during the COVID-19 pandemic.