Survey of adopters What would have helped most?

Our recent report The spread challenge looked at how to support the successful uptake of innovations and improvements in health care.

In the report, we conducted surveys of the innovators and, separately, the adopters from 26 Health Foundation projects which aimed to spread a defined intervention or approach to specific adopter sites. The survey took place throughout December 2017 and January 2018. We received responses from 21 innovators and 42 adopters.

One question asked adopters which changes, with hindsight, would have made the biggest difference for helping them to adopt the intervention. The most popular option was greater opportunities to share learning and experiences with one another (chosen by 41% of adopters). Doing more to support adopter readiness ranked second (31%) and providing more training and support ranked equal third (26%), along with providing more time for implementation. Interestingly, the option of providing a more detailed written description of the intervention was the least popular.

These priorities were also reflected in innovators’ responses to the same survey question. When innovators were asked, the most popular options were doing more in advance to support adopter readiness (chosen by 57% of innovators) and providing more training and support to build adopter skills and capabilities (48%).