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The new government drive for quality to be at the heart of health care is discussed, following which an insight into the membership and remit of the new European Health‐Care Working Group is given. The article also provides a brief description of the European Foundation for Quality Management model and the benefits associated with applying self‐assessment as a tool for attaining business excellence. Finally, the first stages of the work proposed by the European Health Care Working Group is highlighted along with the potential effect on health care within the UK.

This article describes the journey of managing the change from seven separate health providing units to one overall team providing a range of services. To facilitate the change the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award self‐assessment model was used. The benefits and limitations of the model are described as are the activities undertaken to achieve a goal of delivering quality care within a customer driven rather than service driven focus. Finally the learning gained from the change is shared in an attempt to help others undertaking a similar journey.

In view of the dearth of information relating to organisational effectiveness of NHS Trusts in comparison with clinical effectiveness, a complex study was undertaken to determine whether overall effectiveness was a result of management processes, people, or a combination of both. The study incorporated two phases involving the distribution of a comprehensive questionnaire to identify the “whats” of organisational effectiveness, and a benchmarking exercise aimed at identifying the “hows”. In the main, the better performing trusts were found to be subscribing to the concepts of “keeping it simple”, innovation and attainment of highly efficient processes. A number of examples of better/best practices were observed which included visible leadership, a commitment towards stakeholder involvement and the practice of teamworking. Given the complexity of the study area, the findings were deemed valuable to managers practising within all areas of healthcare. However, a need for further research was identified in order to substantiate the results.

This article recognises that many total quality management initiatives fail and that the failures are often due to a lack of knowledge, skills and expertise, particularly in relation to the organisation’s leaders/managers. In contrast however, success is more likely if the implementation approach is well planned, executed, assessed and reviewed. There are five key steps that need to be contained within the implementation plan some of which include setting up a steering committee, agreeing the norms, values and behaviours for the organisation and determining indicators associated with success. Furthermore, a number of actions need to be effected within those five key steps. In essence it was concluded that without careful planning the programme for implementing total quality management was likely to fail resulting in an opposite effect on the quality of healthcare delivery to the one that was intended.

Owing to pressures from a range of stakeholders for a wider and improved range of services from the Higher Education (HE) sector in the UK, linked with a simultaneously increasing pressure on resource utilisation, universities are currently facing the challenges of reorienting their approaches to be more customer‐focused and conducting their activities in a more business‐like manner. A consortium of UK universities is currently implementing the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) excellence model as a means for addressing these issues. The focus of this paper is the implementation of EFQM excellence model self‐assessment in the UK HE sector. This paper describes the specific issues in implementing the model in UK HE, with a particular focus on the choice of self‐assessment methodology, and compares and contrasts these with self‐assessment issues in the wider public sector. The early signs are that EFQM excellence model self‐assessment can help to produce a more customer‐oriented culture in HE institutions, providing that the lessons learned from the wider public sector are put into practice.