The problem

During the pandemic the operational, clinical and finance teams need to approve the quality impact assessment (QIA) for all Cost Improvement Programme (CIP) schemes because otherwise the impact of decisions made may not be adequately assessed.

The challenge

How might we allow for the accurate evidencing that this review process has been undertaken at a time when physical signatures on documents are hard to obtain with colleagues working offsite and away from their usual workspaces so that we can continue to evidence that the correct governance is being followed for all CIP schemes in a timely way?

The outputs

The ‘tangible’ outputs that came from our innovation were

• that a robust process was introduced to evidence the QIA process
• a new way of documenting data contained within a SharePoint list was also discovered
• an easy way of creating an electronic approval was also discovered

The outcomes

The benefits to the teams of this process were that they are now able to evidence their approvals wherever they are, which is necessary in a world where teams are not necessarily in the same spaces. We have been able to reduce the time it takes so evidence approvals for the users. We have been able to free up considerable time for the Chief Medical Officer and Director of Nursing who can now review QIAs separately, when previously they were required to meet together for a period to review these documents.