Blog | The power of data

Bec Richmond, director of integrated care and value-based care at Optum, explores the role Population Health Management (PHM) can play in helping the NHS tackle the elective care backlog and in turn, help patients ‘wait well’ by proactively managing their health and wellbeing while they wait for treatment.

Recovering the elective care backlog is a critical priority that is affecting NHS organisations across the UK as outlined in recent policy documents. It’s an ongoing issue that has escalated dramatically since the pandemic.

In Lord Darzi’s recent investigation into the NHS he found that 280,000 people had been waiting for an operation, scan, or appointment for over a year. While efforts to reduce the backlog and wait times indicate a shift in the right direction, there is still a long road ahead to meet targets.

A recent article by Robert Findlay, about how elective recovery is losing more momentum, highlighted some thought-provoking data points. It shows the NHS is significantly below the one million annual reduction needed to meet the 18-week referral-to-treatment standard by March 2029. I agree with Findlay that “the right approach to the renewed national waiting time targets could reverse the decline.”

The healthcare teams I work with from those in front-line roles to integrated care board (ICB) leaders are feeling the pinch when it comes to tackling the backlog. I’m faced with many questions day to day - How can we improve access to care and ensure it is available when needed? How can we provide more proactive, personalised care? How do we help people stay well for longer? How can we take proactive action? All while managing day jobs where time and resources are limited.

That’s where I believe data becomes a powerhouse. When data is linked and presented visually it tells a story – turning data into insight, that can then be actioned. My answer to these questions is, we need a clear data-driven picture to help us understand what newly-formed integrated neighbourhood teams could stop doing to allow proactive care to become the core of their work, and to help focus those efforts on areas of highest need and patient cohorts at highest risk.

With a proactive approach to reducing the backlog, we can find and engage with people early to ensure they wait well. And identify patients who no longer need to wait at all because we have more appropriate ways of caring for them that might remove the need for elective care altogether.

Several years ago, I worked in partnership with colleagues at the Optum Advisory Board on a real-life example in Calderdale. Healthcare professionals from primary and secondary care came together to take proactive steps to reduce wait lists. Together, they figured out a way to do things differently. By intervening early, they prevented people from waiting poorly or found different ways of supporting them which stepped them down from a waiting list altogether.

We still need care teams to be proactively engaged, but they don’t need to navigate analytics and planning in a vacuum. I believe that we have the tools and capabilities to enable data driven decision making within ICSs – across England and beyond – right now to tackle wait lists effectively.

Sharing data insights directly with local neighbourhood care teams can enable them to take action. We can help them use data to transform the way they work and evidence the positive impact on care.

There are simple steps we can take to reduce the elective care backlog and enable patients to wait well. We need to:

Audit waiting lists to identify those at greatest risk of not waiting well.
Engage with patients and ask more focused questions to create meaningful care plans.
Improve collaboration to maximise the expertise of those within Integrated Neighbourhood Teams (INTs).
Monitor the impact of how new approaches deliver better patient outcomes.
Use evidence to do more of what is working and pivot quickly if it’s not.
Keep doing it. Together!

The main ingredients for this recipe are data and analytics. But it is the ‘chefs’ (healthcare professionals and teams), with their patients, who mix the ingredients and make the recipe a success.

You can learn more by watching my latest webinar around accelerating neighbourhood working Or if you have the time for me to talk to you about the ‘how’, please do reach out by getting in touch using the form below.

Disclaimer

This article was prepared by Rebecca Richmond in a personal capacity. The views, thoughts and opinions expressed by the author of this piece belong to the author and do not purport to represent the views, thoughts and opinions of Optum. Any general health information contained in this article is for information purposes only and is not a substitute for your doctor’s care.

About the author

Bec Richmond

Director of integrated care and value-based care

Bec is the director of integrated care and value-based care at Optum. She helps integrated care systems develop and implement sustainable PHM strategies.