Healthcare Leadership Capacity: Managing for Improvement and Innovation

Our research addresses these concerns head on, to explore what management and leadership capacity is needed in healthcare and how it might be enhanced. Funded by prestigious sources, including The Health Foundation, we work closely with policy makers, professional bodies and healthcare practitioners, regionally, nationally and internationally. 

We contribute to ongoing debates about management in the UK NHS and to a deep understanding of healthcare management challenges in other national contexts such as China, India, Italy, Netherlands, Scandinavia and Spain. 

Our Team

We are a team of academics, based at the University of York. Our team consists of a number of leading researchers with a long-standing interest in healthcare leadership, management and improvement, including Professor Ian Kirkpatrick, Professor Nicola Burgess, Professor Leo McCann, Professor Federica Angeli,  Dr Tina Kowalski, Dr Shuyi Liu, Dr Jane Suter and Kirsten Armit. Other external academics, Professor Rebecca Malby, and Dr Amar Shah, are affiliated with our group.

The team is experienced in the conduct of both qualitative and quantitative research in healthcare settings worldwide (e.g. China, India, Italy, Netherlands, Spain etc.). We have published widely on healthcare management and have strong engagement with policy and practitioner communities. Examples of our work include: a highly cited NHS Confederation blog (long read) series written by Professor Ian Kirkpatrick, focusing on the state of management in the UK NHS; Professor Leo McCann’s submission to the House of Lords Public Services Committee on emergency services; and Professor Nicola Burgess’s widely cited evaluation of the Virginia Mason Initiative.