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How the Right Data Can Transform NHS Operations

Recently the NHS published The Insightful Provider Board. This guide helps boards analyse their information handling, leadership behaviours, and culture while providing metrics to enhance understanding of an organisation’s performance.

Focusing on the ‘Meaningful Information section, we caught up with Managing Director, Lee Scothern to find out why this guide is an important framework for NHS boards to maximise their information, become more efficient, and transform operations.

“It’s no secret that NHS boards need relevant and meaningful information to aid in decision-making, after all, data drives success and is the foundation of meaningful progress.

However, NHS boards need to measure and understand performance by using the right technology to make data collection and analysis easy, accessible and representative of reality; particularly as productivity remains a challenge for most organisations and continues to be high up on the political agenda.

Access to robust data, analytics and reporting can focus trust boards on service delivery and the impact on patients, which can help improve decision-making and efficiency.

The guide states that “reports to the board should focus on the outcomes and impact of the board’s actions to deliver change and improvement, and not just report on processes or progress made against a plan.”

Getting credible and granular data, looking at pathway-level, specialty/sub-specialty and consultant-level detail is pivotal to understanding not just where waiting list backlogs sit but how decision making will help the NHS implement changes to drive efficiency and reduce the backlogs.

What will be interesting is seeing the bigger impact this will have on NHS Boards on a wider scale. Using this data is key to driving the collaboration between NHS organisations and other providers. There needs to have clear visibility of what demand and capacity looks like across systems to drive the correct decision making at a speciality level to ensure that system wide capacity is optimised and mutual aid is embedded as business as usual.”