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This is the first year that Clinical Commissioning Groups will operate as fully-fledged organisations across England. They face a lot of unknowns. Will they have the money to do the job they want to do? Will they have the muscle and commissioning nous to challenge vested interests? Do they really understand the health needs of their populations? What can they do to improve things for the least advantaged? Can the enthusiasts keep the naysayers on board? Will NHS England give them the headroom to make a difference?

This award is about recognising the CCGs that are tackling these unknowns head on. They might be developing their leadership skills or their technical skills around data and commissioning. They might be developing their relationships across health and social care, with the voluntary sector and with patients themselves to understand their population better. They might be looking for new ways to deliver care pathways. It is not clear yet what an excellent CCG looks like – this award is, in part, about trying to find out.

Entry criteria

The judges will be looking for evidence of:

• Commissioning that takes account of the health and wellbeing needs of all of the local population

• A deliverable strategy for improvement which reaches those with the greatest health needs and that addresses health inequalities

• Real engagement with the population with a focus on commissioning care that puts the patient first

• Evidence of how the organisation is actively managing the performance of provider organisations and holding them to account

• Recognition of best practice and treatment guidelines in commissioning strategy

• Progress on the quality, innovation, productivity and prevention agenda at all levels

• Strong financial management which supports the organisation's strategic goals

• Good people development throughout the organisation

• A culture where staff feel valued and respected and can raise concerns and receive effective response

• Excellent engagement between managers and clinicians, with demonstrable unity of purpose and collaboration to drive service improvements

• Effective and responsive handling of complaints

• Long term strategic planning

Enter Clinical Commissioning Group of the Year

Clinical leaders are inspiring. They show us how things should be done, they challenge us when they are not done right and they make us want to follow them. For clinical leaders, “good enough” is never good enough. They want the best for all patients and they are systematic in how they achieve this, using evidence to underpin change and eliminate unwarranted variation. They support their teams to innovate and constantly monitor the impact they have. They understand the patient experience and build their teams around the patient. Clinical leaders are fundamental to improving patient safety, embedding common standards and creating a culture where compassion is highly valued and where patients come first.

This award is about recognising those clinical leaders – doctors, nurses, midwives, physiotherapists and others – who are making a difference to patients and can prove it. The leaders who qualify for this category may well protest that success is a team effort. They are right, of course, but good teams have good leaders.

Entry criteria

The judges will be looking for evidence of:

• Advancing the quality and safety of care through innovation and improvement

• Leadership that helps all members of the team put the patient first and creates a culture of compassionate care

• Embedding of a common set of core values and standards

• Using evidence to create initiatives that have demonstrably improved the quality of care

• Working collaboratively with managers and other clinicians

• Measurable impact on patient care, practice and services

• Managing and developing effective relationships within teams and a consistent focus on compassionate care

• Demonstrating the benefits of change to patients, other staff and the wider organisation

• Fostering openness where staff can raise concerns and receive an effective response

Clinical Leader of the Year

When clinicians are engaged in research, outcomes for patients improve. When organisations are “research active”, they attract research funding. When the NHS as a whole attracts research, it creates jobs and wealth for UK PLC. Research is good for all of us – patients, clinicians, organisations and the wealth of the nation.

This award is not about recognising specific research studies, important though these are. Rather, it seeks to recognise the significant impact that clinical research has at trust level. Entrants must be from organisations with NHS trust status and submissions should demonstrate the extent to which the trust as a whole has made clinical research part of its core business over the last 12 months. Judges will be looking for evidence of an organisation-wide approach rather than good practice in running specific research studies.

Entry criteria

Submissions could include one or more of the following elements:

• Development of a portfolio of clinical research trials in the organisation or a sizeable improvement in the level of research commitment

• Evidence of expansion in the breadth of disease specialties or service areas engaged in clinical research

• Evidence of new strategies or projects that have significantly increased the scope of research activity undertaken

• Evidence of far-reaching promotional campaigns that have raised patient awareness of research activity, and increased access to research participation

• Evidence of enhanced patient engagement and contribution to strategic decision-making about research including participation in initiatives such as the NIHR Clinical Research Network's Involvement4Access

• Introduction or expansion of special training and development that has increased research capacity

• Programme of activity to champion clinical research

• Evidence of embracing new types of research or prioritising and developing a previously insubstantial area

• Initiatives to strengthen and improve the patient experience when taking part in research

• Evidence of how the adoption of clinical research study findings has led to significant service improvement, improved patient outcomes and/or transformed routine clinical practice

This list is not exhaustive; other examples of enhanced clinical research impact are welcomed.

Enter Clinical Research Impact

There has been significant organisational turmoil in the NHS in the last couple of years. Community providers have been absorbed by acute trusts or mental health trusts or set up on their own as community interest companies or aspiring foundation trusts. Hospital trusts have merged. It has not been easy.

This award is about recognising those organisations that have completed or made significant process towards creating a new NHS provider, one that is delivering excellent care and redesigning services. “New” could mean a new trust created after a merger of two or more NHS providers. It includes organisations that have acquired and/or transferred a major area of service delivery. The key measure the judges will use to assess the entries is evidence for the sustainability of the new entity. In other words: is fit for purpose for the demands that will be placed on it?

Entry criteria

The judges will be looking for evidence of:

• The evidence base for the re-organisation. This should embrace both the financial and the clinical business case

• Why other alternatives were not adopted

• Successful engagement of all relevant stakeholders

• The methods used to deliver the re-organisation: including why they were adopted and evidence of their success

• Re-organisation not having a negative or distracting effect on existing service delivery

Enter Creating Sustainable NHS Providers

How often do we need to hear patients’ stories about answering the same questions again and again? Or their surprise that the care plan drawn up in secondary care was a mystery to their GP? So much of this could be prevented if clinicians could only share data. We know that when healthcare professionals share data they can significantly improve quality of care, patient experience and clinical outcomes. Sharing information allows new pathways to develop, ones that make sense for patients and are more efficient. Patients who can see their information can also take better control their health.

We also know that clinicians and patients are wary about sharing confidential information. Data sharing must take place within a carefully structured governance structure in which all parties – including patients – feel safe. To deliver improvements, data must be of high quality, accurate, contemporaneous and free from duplication. To deliver efficiencies, organisations need to turn data into business intelligence.

The award is about recognising initiatives where data sharing has made a real difference to patient care – improving outcomes, experience and supporting patients to look after themselves better – and delivered efficiencies for the NHS.

Entry criteria

The judges will be looking for evidence of:

• Data sharing between healthcare professionals and/or between organisations to improve patient care and deliver improved clinical outcomes

• How data sharing has driven organisational efficiencies

• Excellence in information governance including adherence to data protection and other information legislation

• Clear focus on data quality, data collection and data presentation

• Use of data to inform strategic decision-making

• Demonstrable benefits to the patient

• Engagement with clinicians and key stakeholders, including patients

• Innovation

Enter Enhancing Care by Sharing Data and Information

Most of us now use internet banking, yet for many GPs sending a blood sample to the local lab requires a paper form. We book our airline tickets electronically and do not even need a paper docket these days but we receive a printed letter for our appointment at an outpatient clinic. It is becoming more apparent by the day that the NHS needs to move out of the paper era and into the electronic age. PriceWaterHouseCoopers this year identified billions of pounds of savings to be made by moving the NHS to modern IT systems. Meanwhile the health secretary has set an ambition for the NHS to be paperless by 2018. Some are sceptical both about the savings and the ambition – not helped by the NHS history of failed large scale IT projects –but others argue that change is long overdue.

This award is about moving on from that legacy and recognising the initiatives where IT, clinicians, managers and suppliers have worked together to identify a clinical need and come up with a solution that works for everyone – better and more efficient care, a real return on investment, improved patient experience and clinicians who see that NHS IT can work for them.

Entry criteria

The judges will be looking for evidence of:

• Innovative use of IT to improve patient outcomes and organisational efficiency

• Benefits to patients

• Mainstreaming of IT within the organisation

• Partnership working with the private sector

• Engagement with clinicians

• Supporting new ways of working

• Technology used to optimise home care opportunities

• Engagement with key stakeholders including the public and patients

Enter Improving Care with Technology

Assuring a sustainable health, public health and social care system is one of the most important challenges of our time. The health system has a clear responsibility to take a leading role in tackling climate change and ensure a health and care system which is environmentally, financially and socially sustainable. This is not just about the NHS but includes all those involved in looking after the public’s health and wellbeing. This includes, among others, Clinical Commissioning Groups, Health and Wellbeing Boards, Local Authorities and the NHS.

This award is about recognising organisations and systems that have changed ways of working to improve sustainability whilst enhancing patient care. It is about organisations and systems that have improved environmental, economic and social sustainability.

Entry criteria

The judges will be looking for projects where organisations have implemented changes that improve environmental, economic and social sustainability. The judges will be looking for evidence of:

• Demonstrating strong leadership and management support

• Evidence of impact, delivering the triple benefits of environmental, financial and social sustainability

• Evidence of effective engagement with a range of groups such as staff, patients and the public resulting in broad support and changing attitudes/ behaviours

• Demonstrating robust analysis, measurement and evaluation to understand the impact of the project

• Partnership working and building relationships with relevant groups

• Clearly demonstrate the implementation of changed ways of working to deliver new care systems

• Demonstrate robust sustainable commissioning and procurement to strengthen local communities, improve health outcomes and enhance the environment

• Demonstrate improvements in environmental sustainability through better use of resources

• Evidence of improving sustainability through use of technology

• Delivering public health campaigns to improve lifestyle or change attitudes

• Demonstrating social value, good corporate citizenship, and community engagement

• Evidence of a system wide approach to sustainability

Improving Environmental and Social Sustainability

The ageing population and rise in the number of older people with multiple long term conditions presents challenges to a public sector in which health and local government operate in silos. So many of the care pathways that could prevent a hospital admission – or speed up a discharge from hospital – require joint working. This is true not only for the care of older people but also of those with mental health problems, or learning difficulties, or living in poor housing, to give a few examples. Partnerships between health and local government can fulfil the aim of putting the patient at the centre of care. Partnership working has the potential to improve quality while reducing costs by integrating health and local government services, resulting in joined-up, patient-centred care. True partnership working can transform the way that care is provided for people with long-term conditions and enable people with complex needs to live healthy, fulfilling, independent lives. Partnership working can address community health issues and the wider determinants of public health.

This award will recognise organisations that have together built partnership working to ensure local government and health partners are jointly engaged in improving the health and wellbeing of their populations.

Entry criteria

The judges will be looking for evidence of:

• Health and local government working closely together to improve the health and wellbeing of the community

• Joint work between health and social care to support the care of long term conditions

• Joint working to deliver reablement

• Joint working to address the wider determinants of health

• Evidence of how working in partnership between health and local government has enhanced the experience of patients or the public in their use of services

• Engagement with key stakeholders including the public

Improved Partnerships between Health and Local Government

Mental health has never been short of innovators. Now with one person in four living with a common mental health problem and up to one in a 100 lives with serious mental illness they are needed more than ever. The innovators in this field are using a wide variety of old and new tools to engage with service users and the wider communities in which they live. Mental health innovators have been among the first to explore how social networking and computer based systems can help service users. Meanwhile, the Prime Ministers “challenge on dementia” has focused minds about how the health service can meet the needs of an estimated 670,000 people living with dementia.

This award is about seeking out the innovation that can is leading the way in delivering better services, empowering service users, putting them at the centre of care, engaging the community and reducing stigma.

Entry criteria

The judges will be looking for evidence of:

• Putting the patient at the centre of care

• Improving patient access to diagnosis, treatment and care services in ways that promote equality of access and experience

• Implementing choice at the point of referral

• Enhancing the patient experience

• Improving clinical outcomes

• Increasing public confidence in mental health services

• Promoting good mental health across communities

• Action to tackle the stigma around mental health

Enter Innovation in Mental Health

Around one in three people in the UK lives with a chronic condition, £7 of every £10 spent on the health budget goes towards supporting them. It is estimated that by 2018 nearly three million people will have three or more conditions at any one time. To put in bluntly, doing more of the same when it comes to managing long term conditions will bankrupt the NHS. We need to do thinks differently. That might mean using new technology, or targeting resources where they can do most good. It might involve staff taking on new roles or working with new partners. Money is not the only reason we need to see innovation and improvement in the management of long term conditions. The main driving force has to be the chance to make people’s lives better by helping them stay out of hospital, in employment, living full and independent lives.

This award is all about doing just that. It will reward the service innovators who put patients at the centre of care, involve them in planning new services, work with partners to deliver integrated care pathways, and can show better outcomes, more self-care by patients and fewer hospital admissions.

Entry criteria

The judges will be looking for evidence of:

• Putting the patient at the centre of care

• Patient involvement in planning of services

• Care planning involving the patient which is repeated at regular intervals

• Partnership working (such as multi-disciplinary, public-private sector or working with local government) to address the complexity of care required

• Good use of information to help promote self-management where possible

• Effective working across the primary and secondary care interface and with other partners to reduce emergency admissions

• Technology used to enable more self-care and homecare

• Imaginative approaches to new staff roles and workforce planning

Enter Managing Long Term Conditions

Today’s healthcare system is immensely complex and with complexity comes risk. Improving patient safety requires managing risk by assessing how patients could be harmed – and removing that risk where possible. Minimising the risk of information being lost at handover between teams or between organisations, for example. Reducing the variation in outcomes for patients admitted on a Friday compared to those admitted on a Monday. Some risks we know and understand – yet fail to act on them. Some we don’t and they will become apparent only when we look at safety incidents systematically. But whether we are dealing with known or unknown risks, there is a need for a culture in which staff can act on risks, report them and know that their reports will be investigated dispassionately and thoroughly.

This award is all about driving up patient safety and so will recognise not just initiatives focused on identifying a risk and reducing it, but ones that seek also to introduce a new culture around patient safety that includes how incidents are reported and investigated, how they are acted on and what can be learned.

Entry criteria

The judges will be looking for evidence of:

• Analysis of information revealing the problems and identification of improvements to systems and processes

• Multi-disciplinary working, including learning and sharing across teams, specialities and care settings, including across health and social care

• A culture in which incidents are readily reported, analysed and used as learning opportunities

• Evaluation, or planning for evaluation, to demonstrate sustainability of improvements

• Patient engagement and involvement

• Robust incident reporting systems that staff feel confidence to use and which reflect learning and data back into service design and delivery

• Structured approach to incident investigation

• Staff involvement and buy-in at all levels, with everyone understanding the goal

Enter Patient Safety

Primary care and community services are changing rapidly as care moves out of hospital and closer to people’s homes. They are at the forefront of efforts to avoid unnecessary admission to hospital and to ensure timely discharge of patients from hospital. With an increasing ageing population, much of their focus must be on helping people to maintain or regain their independence. To achieve this and deliver high quality services that put the patient at the centre will require new service models, new ways of working, new partnerships and the use of new technology.

This award is about finding and recognising the innovators in primary and community care. The initiatives that start with patients at the centre and find new ways to meet their needs to deliver a revolution in primary and community care and can show better outcomes, new ways of working, new partnerships and value for money.

Entry criteria

The judges will be looking for evidence of:

• Service redesign that puts patients and their carers at the centre

• Active involvement of service users and their families/carers in redesigning and implementing new services

• Evidence-based development that takes into account best practice and treatment guidelines

• Ensuring the service is available to all qualifying patients within the catchment area including disadvantaged and hard to reach groups

• Active involvement from all members of the team in redesigning and implementing new services

• Building partnerships with relevant stakeholders, including the voluntary sector and social care providers

• Value for money with demonstrable benefits for outcomes, quality and efficiency

Enter Primary Care and Community Service Redesign

Innovation is at the heart of the QIPP agenda and is intimately linked with quality, productivity and prevention. Without innovation, the NHS will not deliver the savings needed to make the service sustainable. But what does innovation mean? Is it doing the truly new – or doing what we already know works and doing it at scale? The NHS is recognised as a world leader at invention, however sometimes the best ideas fail to achieve widespread use in the NHS as adoption has been slow. Now more than ever before, innovation has a vital role to play in improving patient outcomes and delivering value for money. Innovation must be encouraged and nurtured, whether it is to address well known problems such as access, equity and variation or new challenges such as sharing records with patients.

This award is about recognising primary care organisations that have embraced innovation. The judges will be looking for evidence of engagement with the QIPP agenda across the organisation and examples of innovation. They will want to see how innovation has led to excellence in implementing evidence and acknowledged good practice, with improved patient outcomes and higher quality services that are more efficient and more productive. They will want to see organisations that encourage and support the rapid and wide-scale uptake of evidence-based innovation.

Entry criteria

The judges will be looking for evidence of:

• Engagement with the quality, innovation, productivity and prevention (QIPP) agenda

• Innovation achieving or working towards quality and productivity

• Excellence in implementation of policy and guidance

• Improved patient outcomes and services

• Improved access, including access to appropriate therapies and practitioners

• Improvements in the health of part of the local population, such as by targeting those with the greatest health needs

Enter Primary Care Innovation

NHS trusts are undergoing rapid change – a statement that applies as much to teaching hospitals as it does to district general hospitals, community trusts or mental health trusts. Public and patient expectations are rising; new drugs and new treatments need to be provided; clinical outcomes need to be demonstrated. Then there are the twin pressures of the ageing population and the rising number of people with long term conditions coupled with the need to make financial savings. Meanwhile, the Francis Report has brought into sharp relief the need for compassion in care and the importance of putting the patient at the centre.

This award is about recognising those high performing provider organisations that are already providing excellent care built on strong engagement between clinicians and managers and where patients take centre stage. It is about recognising those organisations with a culture of continuous improvement, information is used to drive improvement. It is looking also for the organisations where there is an eye to the future and how the organisation needs to adapt to survive –whether by creating new roles, developing the next generation of leaders, working with new partners or designing new services.

Entry criteria

The judges will be looking for evidence of:

• High-quality and compassionate care with the patient at the centre

• Excellent engagement between managers and clinicians, with demonstrable unity of purpose, and collaboration to drive service improvement

• Use of management and clinical information to drive improvement

• Recognition of best practice and treatment guidelines in service delivery

• Culture which encourages openness, transparency and candour

• Understanding of health inequality issues in the catchment population

• Progress on the quality, innovation, productivity and prevention (QIPP) agenda at all levels

• Good people development throughout the organisation, a culture where staff feel valued and respected, and can raise concerns and receive effective response

• Strong financial management which supports the organisation's strategic goals

• Partnership working with other organisations, both in the NHS and outside it

• High performance on access including waiting times

• Effective and responsive handling of complaints

• Long term strategic planning

Provider Trust of the Year

The hospital as we know and love it faces an uncertain future. All hospital inpatients deserve to receive safe, high quality, sustainable care – but in the face of rising acute admissions, an ageing population, an increasing number of patients with multiple complex conditions as well as new technologies, drugs and innovations, can they deliver it? It is clear that hospital needs to adapt. It is already starting to happen. Services that were once provided only in hospitals are now being delivered in the wider community. Teams are reaching outside the traditional boundaries of the hospital, providing expert services for patients and education resources for generalists. Inside hospitals, teams are looking at how they reduce variation to deliver safe, high quality care 24/7.

This award seeks to recognise secondary care initiatives that are at the forefront of redesigning their services to provide high quality care for patients. Judges want to see service redesign that puts patients and their carers at the centre and where there is active involvement from service users and their families in the design process. They want to see redesign that takes into account best practice and treatment guidelines and ensures equity of access, even to hard to reach groups. They also want to see value for money with demonstrable benefits for outcomes, quality and efficiency.

Entry criteria

The judges will be looking for evidence of:

• Service redesign that puts patients and their carers at the centre

• Active involvement of service users and their families/carers in redesigning and implementing new services

• Evidence-based development that takes into account best practice and treatment guidelines

• Ensuring the service is available to all qualifying patients within the catchment area including disadvantaged and hard to reach groups

• Active involvement from all members of the team in redesigning and implementing new services

• Building partnerships with relevant stakeholders, including the voluntary sector and community providers

• Value for money with demonstrable benefits for outcomes, quality and efficiency

Enter Secondary Care Service Redesign

How many times have we heard the mantra that “our staff are our biggest asset”? And how many times has this produced an upward roll of the eyes from staff who feel anything but valued? The evidence from more than two decades of study are that a workforce that feels valued and has an element of control over its future is healthier and more productive. In the NHS, staff who are motivated to perform well and feel able to suggest and implement ideas for improvement and feel supported by their workplace culture deliver higher quality services. High levels of staff engagement result in improved levels of patient satisfaction, so staff wellbeing is essential to patient wellbeing. In the light of the Francis report, the need for managers to listen to staff has taken on a new impetus.

This award is about recognising organisations that have turned the theory of engaging with staff into reality and can show how staff engagement is delivering innovation, higher quality services and contributing to the QIPP agenda. It will recognise organisations that are able to demonstrate that staff engagement is at the heart of their culture - where they are at the heart of decision making processes, feel valued, and understand the values of the organization. Judges will be looking for organisations where staff can express concerns and receive an effective response; where there is partnership with trade unions.

Entry criteria

The judges will be looking for evidence of:

• An environment where staff are at the heart of decision making processes, feel valued, and understand the values of the organisation

• Staff being able to express concerns and receive an effective response

• Engagement and partnership working with trade unions

• A sustainable engagement programme with measurable outcomes that are reviewed regularly

• Implementation of the NHS Constitution and a clear local vision for engagement

• Staff engagement delivering better patient care

• Staff engagement contributing to the QIPP agenda

• Examples of improvements/changes made as a result of staff engagement

• Promotion of best practice

Enter Staff Engagement

The changing nature of healthcare – where it is delivered, what is delivered, how it is measured – will require new skills and competencies in the workforce. Effective workforce development supports service delivery and ensures that staff are fit for purpose, with the right skills mix. Evidence shows that it is critical in driving up quality, while seeking to reduce costs. It involves growing the workforce via progression routes and career pathways and so retaining quality staff. The result is a more stable substantive workforce with reduced reliance on temporary staff, overtime and outsourcing. This in turn results in improved continuity and better patient care.

This award is about recognising innovation in workforce development. Judges will be looking for new strategic approaches to workforce planning to improve quality and productivity. They will want to see organisations re-thinking roles, breaking down the traditional barriers to create an adaptable workforce that delivers quality and efficiency. They want to see initiatives that develop not just the existing workforce and its talents but look for new ways to bring people into the NHS, getting good people into hard-to-fill entry-level posts.

Entry criteria

The judges will be looking for evidence of:

• Developing new strategic approaches to workforce planning to improve quality and productivity

• Re-thinking roles, demonstrating adaptability and innovation, to improve quality and efficiency

• The use of apprenticeship programmes to improve quality and productivity

• Innovative ways growing and developing an organisation’s talent

• Effective systems for getting good people into hard-to-fill entry level posts

Enter Workforce