New White Paper Puts NHS Clinical Commissioning Under the Microscope

LONDON, June 3, 2013 /PRNewswire/ --

Up to £1.6 billion in savings identified across eight key areas of hospital practice

A new white paper 'The Challenge Facing Clinical Commissioning Groups: Reducing Variation in Use of Resources' [Click Here] published today has offered important insights into the way NHS resources are currently being used in hospitals. Many organizations, including the King's Fund, have published lists of priorities for the NHS's fledgling 212 Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs). This white paper, the first of its kind, goes one step further, identifying eight key performance metrics and quantifying the potential impact of more consistent performance across England.

Assessing performance

Researchers at MedeAnalytics utilised proprietary processes and data analytics technology to interrogate statistics from a whole year of the highly detailed Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) data sets, which cover all patient-level activity and associated costs that take place in hospitals in England.

This extensive analysis identified eight areas of activity that could be either improved internally by Trusts or carried out closer to people's homes, thus avoiding hospital visits and associated costs, namely:

• Emergency admissions with 0-1 day length of stay
• Inappropriate admissions
• Readmissions within 30 days
• Outpatient procedures carried out as inpatient same-day procedures
• Follow-up outpatients to first outpatients visits ratio
• Walk-in/inappropriate accident and emergency visits during general practitioner clinic hours
• Admissions for long-term conditions
• Falls

No postcode pattern evident for CCG performance

Interestingly, the data analysis found no obvious pattern in the challenge facing individual CCGs across the eight key metrics, and encouragingly for nearly a quarter (49/212) of CCGs there was only one area in which they needed to improve. In terms of regions:

• The Midlands and East region currently has the best levels of performance overall
• While the London region comes second, it was also the most varied in its rankings, scoring well in some areas and poorly in others.
• The region facing the most challenges is the North, ranking worst for five of the eight indicators.

However, where an individual CCG scored poorly against a metric, other CCGs in the region performed well. There is thus a significant opportunity for CCGs with areas of poor performance to use resources more effectively by understanding how their peers have tackled these challenges.

With NHS spending being so considerable - accounting for nearly one-quarter (23%) of public service spending in 2010−11 - the implications for addressing this variation in NHS performance are significant. Researchers at MedeAnalytics have modelled that if every CCG achieved the average level of performance for eight key metrics identified in the study, annual savings of £880 million or 1.4% percent of total current hospital expenditures in England are achievable. To put this in perspective, gains on this scale would allow the NHS to achieve more than 10% of its annual savings target. If the best (upper quartile) levels of performance were achieved everywhere, the savings would exceed £1.6 billion (2.5% of total current hospital spend). Without addressing areas of lower performance, the NHS will struggle to achieve planned service improvements and better value for money.

Anthony McKeever, one of the authors of the study, and chief executive of MedeAnalytics' UK business commented: "The current spending plans that run to March 2015 are among the most challenging the NHS has delivered in any of the last fifty years. So, NHS Commissioners need bespoke and timely intelligence to tackle the variations they inherit. To rise to the challenges they face, CCGs must focus their resources on practices where intervention will generate the highest pay off. This white paper offers CCGs some valuable intelligence on how to do this."  

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For a free copy of the white paper, go to http://marketing.medeanalytics.com/acton/form/1156/0145:d-0002/0/index.htm

Notes to Editors:

About HES data

The analysis used data from the Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) data warehouse which contains data from the Secondary Uses Service (SUS). HES data consist of all patient-level activity and associated costs that take place in hospitals in England under the Payment by Results (PbR) scheme established by the Department of Health in 2006. There are three HES data sets, pertaining to inpatient stays, outpatient visits, and accident and emergency (A&E) department visits, respectively. The HES data sets are highly detailed, with 164 fields for inpatient stays, 98 fields for outpatient visits, and 162 fields for A&E visits.

About MedeAnalytics

Founded in 1994, MedeAnalytics works with acute, mental health and primary care organisations to improve clinical, financial and operational performance.

Using intuitive online tools and on-demand analytics, we integrate and interrogate national and local data sources to provide the information to help every healthcare organisation excel.

We work with foundation and aspirating trusts to address quality, innovation, productivity and prevention (QIPP), Payment by Results (PbR), patient pathways, clinical coding, service-line reporting, patient-level costing, staff productivity, regulatory compliance and organisational performance management.

For PCTs, CCGs and GP practices, we provide intelligence to enable effective financial and clinical commissioning, referral management and invoice validation.

Worldwide, MedeAnalytics delivers business intelligence to over 850 healthcare organisations using a hosted, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model, which reduces upfront costs and enables rapid implementation and exceptional time-to-value.

For more information, please visit http://www.medeanalytics.co.uk

@MedeAnalyticsUK

For more information:
Alison Krystal
ICC Lowe
+44-(0)208-9876700

Annette Hamilton-Crooks
Annette.HamiltonCrooks@medeanalytics.co.uk
MedeAnalytics International Limited
134 Wigmore Street
London, W1U 3SE