Organisational innovation in health services: Lessons from the NHS treatment centres - Softcover

"This is a fascinating study of the fate of policy innovations in the NHS. Through detailed empirical research, the authors highlight the gap that often exists between plans laid down in Whitehall and experience on the ground. It provides salutary and timely reading for health reformers." Chris Ham, Chief Executive, The King's Fund "To become - or stay - efficient and effective the NHS needs to become good at innovation in service delivery as well as clinical practice. This book gives deep insight into the origin and development of treatment centres, as a case of the conundrum of organisational innovation in the health service, namely how to ensure strategic direction, local ownership and adaption." Sandra Dawson, KPMG Professor of Management, Deputy Vice-Chancellor University of Cambridge & Fellow of Sidney Sussex College "This is an absorbing visit behind the scenes of the implementation of a major healthcare innovation. At a time when health systems face unprecedented change, here and overseas, this study makes salutary reading for those who promote change and for those whose task is to deliver it. To help, the authors offer a very useful synthesis of the learning from this study and the wider innovation evidence base. Well worth reading." Bernard Crump, NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement, University of Warwick

Amid a welter of simultaneous policy initiatives, treatment centres were a top-down NHS innovation that became subverted into a multiplicity of solutions to different local problems. This highly readable account of how and why they evolved with completely unforeseen results reveals clear, practical lessons based on case study research involving over 200 interviews. Policy makers, managers and clinicians undertaking any organisational innovation cannot afford to ignore these findings.