Close Close Nav Takeover

NHS Wales

Covid recovery: design and implementation

NHS Wales – Covid Recovery & Redesign Portfolio: Design and implementation
Client Cardiff and Vale University Health Board NHS Wales
Region UK
Sector Public Sector, Health and Not For Profit
Offering Organisation Change & Implementation

The Challenge

  • The Covid-19 pandemic has had a wide-ranging impact on health services. This consists of: the direct impact of Covid, the indirect impact on non-Covid service provision, and the long-term legacy of Covid-related ill-health
  • In the wake of this, the Cardiff & Vale health board planned to undergo an ambitious recovery strategy, consisting of a portfolio of projects designed to not only get operations back to normal, but to improve the services previously offered
  • Q5 were first engaged to aid in the creation of a funding submission, to go to Welsh Government, for projects within the Unscheduled Care Programme
  • Given the scale of the change the health board were pursuing, and the inter-related nature of a lot of the projects, they were seeking to set up sophisticated governance structure and processes. This was to ensure that the projects had the support they required, whilst the board could receive assurance on their progress
  • Due to the continued demand on the health service, they also required support in setting up and managing certain flagship projects

Our Approach

  • We quickly built rapport with Unscheduled Care project teams, facilitating workshops and providing direction to create a consistent and comprehensive funding submission to go to Welsh Government. We ensured the document provided, for each of the projects: their scope and objectives; a timeline to completion; benefits; and resources required
  • We then took a step back from the individual projects, to consider how the health board should efficiently bring together the multiple moving parts in the portfolio. We designed a governance structure that ensured projects maintained as much autonomy as possible, whilst incorporating the right reporting and support mechanisms, maintaining consistency with the reporting formats implemented by Q5 in our other projects with CaV
  • Once the portfolio was set up, we worked more directly with individual projects to help them progress. This often involved designing kick-off workshops and detailed planning session.
  • Q5 supported the rapid creation of documents & reports for presentation to the Programme Board. With decisions being made quickly, the team needed support with documenting and presenting these for approval. Q5 organised and facilitated discussions with team members to reach key decisions at pace.

Key Outcomes

  • Portfolio structured to enable successful delivery, with projects utilising CaV Way templates to report upwards.
  • Programme and Portfolio Board meetings designed and delivered, now ongoing.
  • Overarching Portfolio benefits defined and reporting on a monthly basis, giving execs ability to track impact of the work.
  • Projects provided with ‘toolkit’ to aid in delivery of their objectives, entailing: benefits tracking framework; reporting templates; meeting structure guidance; roles and responsibilities.
  • Engaged with multiple projects to provide ‘kick-off’ or ‘acceleration’ workshops, helping them plot a path to success, remove blockers, and speed up progress.
Case studies

Discover more client stories

Get in touch with our experts

Contact us