Helen Bevan
Dr Helen Bevan has been a leader of large-scale change in the English National Health Service for more than 20 years. She led the groundbreaking “Business Process Reengineering” transformation programme at The Leicester Royal Infirmary in the 1990s. As a result, she was asked to become a national leader of initiatives to improve patient access to NHS care for which she was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 2001. Helen has been at the forefront of NHS improvement initiatives that have made a difference for thousands of patients ever since. She introduced the first nationwide collaborative programmes to improve the delivery of cancer care across England in 2000. She designed the highly influential “Ten High Impact Changes for Service Improvement and Delivery” in 2004 and conceived the impactful “Productive Series,” starting with “The Productive Ward” in 2007. In 2010, Helen’s team launched a call to action, utilising social movement leadership principles, which contributed to a 51% reduction in prescribing of antipsychotic drugs to people with dementia across the country. Helen initiated NHS Change Day, in partnership with a group of young clinical and managerial leaders in 2012. NHS Change Day 2014 was the largest-ever voluntary collective action for improvement in the history of the NHS with more than 700,000 pledges made to take action to improve experience and outcomes for patients. The NHS Change Day story was a winner of the HBR/McKinsey M-Prize “Leaders Everywhere Challenge.”
Helen Bevan is acknowledged globally for her expertise in large-scale change and ability to translate it into practical action and deliver outcomes. She provides advice, guidance and training on transformational change to leaders of healthcare systems across the world. She is a source of energy and inspiration for change and helps to “think the unthinkable.” In 2008, the 60th anniversary of the National Health Service, Helen was recognised as one of the 60 most influential people in the history of the NHS.
READ Helen’s winning M-Prize story, “Biggest Ever Day of Collective Action to Improve Healthcare.”