M3: Population health management & quality improvement: competitors or collaborators?
Monday 9 March 2026 | 09:30-12:30
Stream: Leading
Session format: Workshop
Typical approaches to population health management focus on large populations, use data sets to understand need, and utilise these insights to better design systems, pathways and care delivery. Compare this to quality improvement, which is highly local, involving clinicians and patients in testing and iterating change ideas. Are the two approaches diametrically opposed? Or is there a way to bring both together?
We will share experience from two parts of London – North West and North East. We will share how we have taken organisational and whole system approaches to population health and equity that integrate with existing approaches to quality improvement. At the heart of this conundrum lies an articulation of the management system and recognising the difference between planning and improvement – both of which are essential.
We will describe practical steps that participants can take with their own staff and communities to apply quality improvement and population health approaches.
After this session, participants will be able to:
- Understand the core principles of population health management, and differentiate this from quality improvement
- Consider how to integrate both into a single management system, with an equity focus
- Identify practical steps to identify a population segment, understand assets and needs, and apply QI and population health approaches
Dominique Allwood Imperial College Health Partners; UK
Amar Shah NHS England; UK