The Midlands Decision Support Network in association with The Strategy Unit are hosting INSIGHT 2022 our annual festival of learning and sharing events for the NHS, local government and other partners across health and care.

We hear a lot about what’s stopping the NHS making the most of its army of talented analysts. Some say we just need more data, or data of better quality. Others point to deficiencies in our infrastructure, IT kit or the software we use. But I’m not so sure. For me the biggest shortfall is in good questions that we can feasibly address.

The number of outpatient attendances in England is now approaching 100 million each year. In 2017/18, the estimated cost of this care was over £9 billion - or 8% of the total NHS England budget.

Yet there are significant gaps in our knowledge. We don’t know enough about the purpose and function of outpatient appointments. Without this knowledge, the NHS will struggle to ensure that the billions spent on these services are delivering best value for the patient and the public.

From our previous work, with Nuffield Trust and Health Foundation, we know that lockdown had a significant effect on attendance at Emergency Departments (ED). We also know that this effect was very unevenly distributed: some demographic groups stayed away far more than others.

Earlier this year, the Strategy Unit reported how levels of attendances at consultant-led emergency departments dropped dramatically in the early days of the COVID pandemic. Rates crept back up during the first lockdown but never reached pre-pandemic levels, and rates fell away again as the local tiered and subsequent national lockdowns were imposed. 

The Strategy Unit and Ipsos MORI launch guide to implementing Person-Centred Intelligence.

I was quoted in a recent Guardian newspaper article which described a London Clinical Commissioning Group’s wasteful use of external management consultants. That in turn came after I spoke at the CASS Business School seminar on the same topic on 9th May this year. In this blog, I set out why I believe the NHS is enticed by management consultancies and I offer an alternative option of ‘internal consultancy’ as practised by the Strategy Unit.

The Strategy Unit has recently completed a £116,000 research project that will inform the development of new care models central to the NHS Five Year Forward View.  The project, funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), aims to combine existing reported knowledge in an “evidence synthesis” of integrated models of care.  The team worked in partnership with the School of Health and Related Research (ScHARR), University of Sheffield, which has an international reputation in evidence synthesis and health services research.