Leading Strategic Innovation in Healthcare

Course content

Over the six-week duration of the course, you will cover themes specifically designed for application to healthcare organisations. Each of the 6 lessons contains around 6-8 hours of content, and are broken down into 8-14 steps to guide you through the content and explore the themes in full.

There will be extensive use of video interviews with leading practitioners, academics and commentators, and an interactive approach in which you will be encouraged to share your own experiences.

Each lesson will include:

  • Pre-reading to introduce you to the topic about to be covered
  • Learning outcomes to show what you will gain from each lesson
  • An introduction from the course leader to set the scene for the lesson
  • An introductory activity to help you fully engage with the themes being covered
  • Learning content, including interactive activities and opportunities to explore the subject matter in depth
  • Summary and an end of lesson activity to consolidate your learning, and create a plan of how to incorporate your new knowledge into your work. 
Lesson 1 - Leadership in Healthcare

  • Models of leadership
  • Expectations of leaders
  • The nature of a healthcare organisation and its impact on leadership
  • The emergence of 'distributed leadership' as a paradigm for healthcare
  • Enhancing personal leadership impact
  • When to follow and when to lead
  • Honing leadership capabilities in 'the day job'.

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Lesson 2 - Developing and Delivering Strategy

  • What is meant by 'strategy'
  • 'Planned' vs 'emergent' strategy
  • Systems thinking and its relevance to healthcare
  • Handling paradox
  • Leading complex change.

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Lesson 3 - High Performance Healthcare Organisations

  • Characteristics of high-performing organisations
  • Performance measurement
  • Operating in a regulated environment
  • The tenets of good operational management
  • Responding to a crisis.

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Lesson 4 - Financing Healthcare

  • Models of healthcare financing
  • Evidence linking systems of finance to performance
  • Case studies of alternative international models
  • Financial management for the uninitiated
  • Key economic concepts in healthcare.

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Lesson 5 - Improvement and Innovation in Healthcare

  • The origins of improvement science
  • Models of improvement for healthcare
  • What do we mean by 'innovation'?
  • The challenge of adoption
  • Mobilising knowledge
  • Systematic approaches to quality improvement
  • Digital innovation.

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Lesson 6 - People; the Key resource in healthcare

  • The nature of the healthcare workforce
  • The global workforce 'crisis'
  • Potential solutions to the workforce challenge
  • Creating and leading effective teams.

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