What qualifies as a rapid evaluation? What challenges do they present – and how are they overcome? When is it appropriate to evaluate rapidly, and when not? And how can commissioners, evaluators and users work together to ensure maximum benefits to health services?
These are just some of the questions that were addressed at a one-day interactive, free event led by the Nuffield Trust in collaboration with three national Rapid Evaluation Centres – RSET, BRACE and the Improvement Analytics Unit.
Bringing together evaluators and organisations that commission evaluations, this event explored the growing use of rapid evaluation in the health service as a mechanism to drive improvement. We stimulated fresh thinking on the particular challenges of rapid evaluation, and how these can be met. Drawing on perspectives from the NHS, social care, academia, voluntary sector and the public, the event laid a path for more meaningful evaluations and better evidence about new ways of delivering health and social care.
Presentations from the event:
Prof Judith Smith
Prof Steve Morris
Victoria Corbishley
Fraser Battye
Dr Jean Ledger and Dr Cecilia Vindrola
Dr Jo Ellins and Tina Coldham
Stephanie Kumpunen and Dr Muna Sheikh
Dr Martin Bardsley
If you or your organisation are involved in rapid evaluations and would like to hear more about our work on evaluations and future events, please get in touch via events@nuffieldtrust.org.uk
Programme
09.15am Registration and refreshments
09.40am Session 1: Rapid evaluation in healthcare - opportunities, needs and challenges
What do we mean by rapid evaluation, why do we do it and what are some of the typical approaches?
Why are some initiatives evaluated and others are not?
What are the benefits, challenges and opportunities of rapid evaluation?
What are the priorities for commissioners when commissioning rapid evaluations?
11.30am Morning refreshments and networking
12.00pm Session 2: Insights from the NHS vanguards - lessons for rapid evaluations
What can we learn from national programmes about local vs large scale rapid evaluations?
1.15 pm Lunch and networking
2.00pm Session 3: Breakout sessions - practical issues in rapid health care evaluations
Rapid ethnography and organisational case studies
Conducting evaluation with service users and members of the public
Logic models
Improving skills within the service, in the context of rapid evaluation
3.30pm Session 4: Useful and timely knowledge - getting evaluation findings into practice
How do we align different interpretations, expectations about evaluation, quality, impact and timelines?
How do you scale up beyond local evaluations?