At Aqua, our work falls into a number of different themes. To make it easier to find the right solutions for you, we have separated the work we do into 10 different areas of expertise.
At Aqua, our work falls into a number of different themes. To make it easier to find the right solutions for you, we have separated the work we do into 10 different areas of expertise.
We have expert advisors covering each of these topics that are here to support your improvement efforts.
Analytics and Evaluation
Our Analytics and Evaluation work consists of designing and delivering research and evaluation to generate insight, build learning, and understand the impact of improvements. The team supports programmes across Aqua and are also able to support your Analytics and Evaluation needs directly.
Aqua is a trusted partner to health and social care organisations in delivering Analytics and Evaluation support, project measurement and research.
Our Measuring for Improvement programme is designed to give you practical techniques to bring your data alive, allowing you to better use data to support your improvement activities. The Quarterly Mortality Report is provided to Medical Directors, Clinical Coders and Service Leads in member organisations, and collates data from the Summary Hospital-level Mortality Indicator (SHMI), which reports on mortality at trust level across the NHS in England.
We also offer tailor-made Analytics and Evaluation support, whereby we will work with you closely to determine your needs and how best we can help.
Aqua has a proven track record of successful delivery with our Analytics and Evaluation work, which recently includes: analysis and interpretation of programme analytics and survey data for NHS Horizons for a large-scale national training programme aimed at health and social care staff; and engagement across over 50 Aqua member organisation and partners on quality improvement initiatives.
Lived Experience
Our Lived Experience Panel is vital in supporting the development and improvement of our services by bringing experience of using health and care services. At Aqua, we can support you to implement your own Lived Experience Panel, to strengthen your quality improvement work.
Implemented in 2014, our Lived Experience Panel is a group of five individuals who bring their experience of using health and care services to ensure that the voice of patients, service users, carers and the wider public is reflected in all the work that we do.
Aqua also provides bespoke work for both members and customers via consultancy by supporting you to build your own lived experience panel, to support your quality improvement work and actively engage in your improvement activity. This has been implemented in a number of both providers and commissioners across the region.
We know from experience that having someone with lived experience as part of quality improvement conversations can shift the direction of the work that is happening, and so we advocate for the involvement of lived experience in all areas of improvement work.
Mental Health
Our Mental Health work supports our customers that provide or commission mental health services. We work closely with these organisations over a structured programme to determine their improvement needs and how best to tackle them.
The Mental Health work that we do is based around a particular theme, with our most recent work being done around the theme of suicide prevention and trauma. This theme is determined each year as a result of the Senior Executive Quality Leads meeting, which is a space for executives in mental health providers to discuss their strategic objectives for the year.
Our Quality Improvement Operational Leads Network Meetings also support those leading quality improvement work within mental health providers by bringing them together as a regional network.
Alongside this, Aqua also provides bespoke work for members, consisting of tailor-made quality improvement training for mental health providers.
We are proud to be a part of the continued and growing emphasis around quality improvement within mental health providers regionally. We are seeing quality improvement teams embedded within organisations and networks being developed across organisations.
Strategic Leadership & Organisational Development
Our Organisational Development work at Aqua involves supporting customers to develop their organisations to be as fit for purpose as possible. We encourage investment in complex relationships across organisations, and collective movements towards positive change.
All of our Organisational Development work is informed by both quantitative and qualitative data, putting a range of recognised organisational development, quality improvement, team and leadership theories and tools into practice.
Great Organisational Development is understanding an organisation’s context and culture, working with communities and across systems, and enabling staff to curate and deliver excellent services.
We strongly believe in having lived experience embedded in all Organisational Development work.
Personalised Care
Personalised Care gives people choice and control over their mental and physical health, recognising that a one-size-fits-all health and care system cannot meet the complex needs of the population. We work with organisations to help them implement this way of working.
Aqua is one of the largest providers of Personalised Care training in the UK, working with organisations including NHS Trusts, CCGs, local authorities, care associations and housing providers. We offer project-by-project services to customers, providing organisations with the skills to deliver safe, high-quality personalised care in any setting.
Our training gives you the tools to understand what personalised care is, and how to develop and implement this practice in a sustainable way in your organisation. We are very experienced in this work, with over 70 clinical teams having received training as part of our collaborative programmes.
Just one of our successful programmes was the National NHS RightCare Shared Decision Making (SDM) Programme. As one of three National Delivery Partners, we successfully led a programme looking at the culture for building and embedding shared decision making with 33 musculoskeletal, maternity and renal teams.
Quality Improvement
For us at Aqua, Quality is care which is safe, effective, timely, efficient, equitable and person-centred. We offer support aimed at solving the problems in your organisation, putting theories and tools into practice to improve quality and build capability.
At Aqua, we want to empower staff members to identify the Quality Improvement needs within their teams and support them to find the best solutions.
We do this by offering a number of programmes centered around improvement, engagement, appreciative inquiry, lean thinking and improvement practice. We also offer tailor-made programmes for organisations looking to tackle a specific issue around Quality Improvement and capability building.
We believe that data is vital in determining what changes need to be made in your organisation, and whether those changes were successful.
Safety
At Aqua, we look at what Safety means from different perspectives across health and care, supporting teams, organisations and whole systems through educational development. We introduce the fundamentals of safety science and work with staff to understand how these can be used practically.
Aqua offers a number of programmes to support organisations with improving Safety. Our programmes focus on Human Factors, Appreciative Inquiry, Safety Culture Surveys, Psychological Safety and Incident Investigation. We also offer tailor-made programmes for organisations looking to tackle a specific issue around safety.
We also host a number of networks, such as the Patient Safety Specialists network which brings together those leading on safety at organisations across the region, as well as supporting Integrated Care Boards and Integrated Care Systems across the North West to implement the requirements of the Patient Safety Incident Response Framework.
At Aqua, we always make sure that we are adding value to the existing work that organisations are doing around improving Safety.
System Transformation
Our System Transformation work is about supporting people, wherever they work, to collaborate in different ways. Aqua has a long history of bringing people and their organisations together, but this work is now as important as ever due to the new Duty to Collaborate from the Health and Social Care Act 2022.
Aqua’s System Transformation work is all about improving relationships and processes in order to improve outcomes. We bring people and their organisations together in order to collaborate in different ways. This work is highly relevant in the current environment, with the introduction of the Health and Social Care Act 2022 and the creation of Integrated Care Boards.
As part of our System Transformation work, we host masterclasses as well as running our own Leading Integrated Teams (LIT) programme, which is a substantial leadership programme aimed at supporting effective integration in systems and places.
However, it’s vital for us at Aqua that you receive the specific support that you need. This is why we work together with organisations and systems to design unique programmes that will be most beneficial for you.
Unwarranted Clinical Variation
Unwarranted Clinical Variation refers to patient care that differs in ways that are not in keeping with national policy and clinical best practice, or reflect the needs and choices of patients. At Aqua, we are committed to reducing Unwarranted Clinical Variation by improving the reliability, quality and experience of health and care for people in the North West and beyond.
Unwarranted Clinical Variation refers to patient care that differs in ways that are not in keeping with national policy and clinical best practice, or reflect the needs and choices of patients. At Aqua, we are committed to reducing Unwarranted Clinical Variation by improving the reliability, quality and experience of health and care for people in the North West and beyond. We aim to do this by using validated clinical datasets, quality improvement approaches along with building governance, clinical leadership and data literacy within organisations.
The Advancing Quality (AQ) programme is our flagship Unwarranted Clinical Variation programme, and is the longest running improvement programme in the NHS, established in 2008. Data is at the heart of what we do with our AQ programme, and plays a key part in helping us identify the opportunities to improve care quality.
We currently support organisations improve the reliability of care and reduce unwarranted clinical variation across six clinical focus areas: Acute Kidney Injury, Decompensated Liver Disease, Community Acquired Pneumonia, Hospital Acquired Pneumonia, Elective Hip and Knee Replacement and Sepsis.
Well Led
Is your service Well-Led? This question is a key part of the Care Quality Commission’s criteria when assessing health and care providers. With more than three decades of experience co-designing and delivering governance, leadership and quality improvement; Aqua can help you meet the Well-Led framework.
Aqua is here to support organisations to meet the standards of the Care Quality Commission’s Well-Led framework, utilising our breadth of experience built since the introduction of Well-Led.
Our expert team will perform an in-depth review of your organisation to determine if:
At Aqua we have in depth knowledge of the healthcare sector, being an NHS organisation working with over 80 NHS providers, commissioners and regulatory bodies. We are also able to draw knowledge and expertise from our accountants, governance experts, clinicians, improvement experts and analysts to ensure that the review we perform is of a high standard.