Table 1:

Summary of the three cases. Acronyms and specialist terminology pertaining to the English system are emboldened.

Aim	Host	Professional leadership	Clinical setting	(Sub)professional groups affected	Approach and methodologies to improvement	Clinical, policy and organizational context
Improving Lung Cancer Outcomes Project (ILCOP)
To improve quality of care and outcomes for patients with lung cancer	Royal College of Physicians of London	Respiratory physicians	Multi-disciplinary teams in hospitals	Respiratory physicians; nurse specialists; oncologists; surgeons; clinical pathologists; radiologists	Supporting teams to develop ideas for improvement in areas of deficient practice through: analysis and feedback of performance data from a national audit; reciprocal face-to-face peer review processes; development of quality-improvement plans; national meetings	Cancer care dominated by top-down national directives, though lung seen as a ‘Cinderella’ cancer, relatively neglected. National Cancer Action Team (NCAT) runs audit-based peer review and performance management (Burnett et al. 2007)
Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm Quality Improvement Project (AAA-QIP)
To reduce peri-operative mortality in elective surgery for abdominal aortic aneurysm	Vascular Society of Great Britain and Ireland	Vascular surgeons	Multi- disciplinary teams predominantly in hospitals	Vascular surgeons; anesthetists; interventional radiologists; nurse specialists	Supporting the implementation of an evidence- / consensus-based care pathway through: regional meetings to discuss, adapt, and reach consensus on proposed pathways; regional leads working with participating hospitals to implement pathways; increasing data input into a national audit database; analysis and feedback of performance data	Ongoing rationalization of surgery due to (contested) association between volume of cases and outcomes (Earnshaw and Hamilton 2007); provision being reviewed by commissioners(regional purchasers of care for a population) accordingly; new screening program also supports rationalization. Other surgical specialties subject to publication of outcome data
ENABLE-Chronic Kidney Disease (ENABLE)
To achieve better quality of care and quality of life for chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients.	Kidney Research UK	Nurses; renal physicians	General practices (family physicians’ offices)	General practitioners (family physicians) (GPs); primary care nurses; pharmacists	Supporting the implementation of evidence- / consensus-based care bundles to improve the management of CKD, with a particular focus on indicators included in the Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF), a payment-for-performance scheme for GPs, through: training in disease management for staff; self- management training for patients	Primary care practice increasingly dominated by incentives of QOF system (McDonald et al. 2007).