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Addressing the NHS Priorities for 2022

On 24^th December 2021, Amanda Pritchard, NHS Chief Executive published the NHS 2022/23 priorities and operational planning guidance which outlined the top 10 NHS priorities for 2022, many of which include objectives already set as top priorities for the Four Eyes Insight Ltd team in 2021.

In this blog post, we take a look at what will be required to realise progress towards three of the productivity-related objectives over the next 12 months and beyond.

Deliver significantly more elective care to tackle the elective backlog, reduce long waits and improve performance against cancer waiting times standards

We recently published an article outlining big-ticket items that, when addressed, are highly impactful on elevating the safe and effective productivity from your elective pathways including:

• – Planning, testing and trialling HVLC productivity lists
• – Examining and addressing short notice cancellations
• – Considering standby patients
• – Considering higher levels of productivity through superlists, parallel lists and other high productivity lists
• – Examining the capacity and capabilities of your processes for planning for high productivity, including how effective 6-4-2 and operating list planning is
• – Starting on time and exploring ‘First’ or ‘Golden’ patient principles – they make a difference.
• – Measuring and reporting more effectively

 

You can read the full article about meeting NHS elective care targets here.

One of the specific requirements is to increase diagnostic activity to a minimum of 120% of pre-pandemic levels which is exactly what the Four Eyes Insight team modelled for NHS England and Improvement in the South East region.

Exploit the potential of digital technologies to transform the delivery of care and patient outcomes – achieving a core level of digitisation in every service across systems.

Out of necessity, we have seen an unprecedented rise of digital technology within the NHS over the last two years and there appears to be a desire to continue this trend; whilst ensuring that the effectiveness of the technology that was implemented at pace and scale during the pandemic is retrospectively analysed.

Whilst providers will be required to meet a core level of digitisation by 2025, it is hoped that many will go beyond this; embracing the potential for interoperability and data sharing to make the patient experience seamless and NHS staff more efficient.

The key to using technology for both administration/operational needs and the delivery of care is data. Data has the power to tell a story which can help identify trends, create action plans and offers a baseline to measure effectiveness. Shared Care Records and eReferral systems are key to unlocking frictionless movement of patients across health and care organisations and care pathways but we mustn’t forget that there are many unearthed stories in the operational data held by every provider and there must be a concerted effort to extract and present this information in a way which helps identify opportunities for continuous improvement.

Make the most effective use of our resources – moving back to and beyond pre- pandemic levels of productivity when the context allows this.

Pre-pandemic, a study demonstrated that productivity of the NHS improved almost two and a half times as fast than the wider economy over the last 12 years, meaning more care and treatments for patients and better value for taxpayers.

Getting back on this productivity trajectory is about more than just increasing resources – NHS organisations will need to rapidly realise efficiencies to release and make the most of existing resources. The terms ‘productivity’ and ‘efficiency’ are often used interchangeably but the guidance is clear that this objective relates to increasing the volume of care given which includes restoring core services to pre-pandemic levels and managing the elective care backlog; with payments and incentives linked to the actual level of activity delivered.

The key will be identifying areas for improvement, modelling the potential for change, understanding what interventions need to be implemented and monitoring their effectiveness so that successes can be amplified.

Whilst localised planning needs to take place to meet the needs of the local population, sharing best practice across the country will be essential to expedite productivity improvement plans.

Cross-organisational collaboration will no doubt positively impact on the effective use of resources.

Organisations must not only work together to optimise care pathways for patients and clear the elective care backlog. They must also work together to share data, identify trends and understand what good looks like.

Riding on the wave of the Global Digital Exemplars, we must embrace the role of technology within Covid-19 recovery plans to not only bring NHS services back to pre-pandemic levels, but to exceed them in pursuit of a world-leading health and care system.

Brian Wells, Managing Director and Founding Partner, Four Eyes Insight commented “It is widely published that NHS staff are under a lot of strain from the excessive demands of the past 18 months, but I have witnessed the extraordinary response to the daily challenges that clinicians and operational staff face as I meet colleagues in NHS trusts where Four Eyes Insight is in support. Elective recovery continues to be a priority in 2022, and the major challenge for providers is how they are going to manage down huge waiting lists for surgery. So, NHS Staff will need to find further resilience, as the service comes through this latest COVID wave, with greater focus on elective recovery.

 “At Four Eyes Insight, we believe that dedicated elective centres and ring-fenced elective pathways have a strategically vital role to reducing waiting lists. We have comprehensive experience in supporting trusts in planning and delivering high levels of performance along elective pathways and through those dedicated elective centres”

Brian is an expert on elective recovery with significant experience of managing highly successful elective centres of excellence.

About Four Eyes Insight

We use the combined power of people and data to get to the root cause of NHS elective care pathway inefficiencies; working collaboratively and engaging with all stakeholders to get buy in for change from the ground up. We implement interventions that optimise elective care pathways and provide tools to monitor their effectiveness ensuring that a culture of continuous improvement to drive long term, sustainable change is embedded along the way.

If you would like to find out more or discuss your requirements, please email info@foureyesinsight.com