Learning lessons from the National Health Service

The Canadian College of Health Service Executives has recently formalized a learning partnership with the UK's Institute of Healthcare Management. The development of such a partnership offers Canadian healthcare leaders an opportunity to learn from the UK's decade long multibillion pound effort to improve its healthcare system using a multipronged approach. This article provides an initial insight into the UK system starting with some of the high-level cultural differences between the UK and Canada. It is important to be aware of these differences as an appreciation of the context of the UK system can assist Canadian leaders in adapting the positive aspects to our system. The article describes some of the high-level cultural differences and then focuses on 3 specific areas that hold salient lessons for Canada: (1) the evolution of the primary care system, (2) the collection of structured and comparable consumer/patient feedback, and (3) a focus on quality (or clinical governance).