Website of the Department of Health

The National Pathology Service Improvement Programme

We have commissioned the National Pathology Service Improvement Team to work with NHS pathology services to implement service improvement techniques and Lean principles. The key principles are to streamline processes by eliminating non-value adding steps, utilise staff skills appropriately and make effective use of technology, in order to meet the needs of patients and clinical users of pathology services.

The learning from six service improvement pilot sites in 2005/06 has been published, in Learning from Pathology Service Improvement Pilot Sites and Improvement Examples.  Results include reduction of test turnaround times, release of staff time previously spent in unproductive work, fewer duplicate tests, improved working conditions for staff and shorter waiting times for patients. 

In 2006/07 the programme implemented a ‘bottom-up’ approach of intensive 5 day ‘rapid improvement’ events, to maximise the impact of service improvement in the NHS, embed the techniques and build local sustainability.  The results available to date are published in Lean: Case Studies.

Other publications include Pathology: A National Framework for Service Improvement and Modernising Pathology Services Toolkit – A Practical Guide to Service Improvement, published in 2005.

For further information, and the publications mentioned above, see the NHS Pathology Improvement website (link in the right-hand column).