Resetting waiting times data
The Patient Experience Library has developed a new waiting list tool to help join up insight and understanding across integrated care systems. Miles Sibley sheds light on the role it could play in the health service’s recovery.
One of the biggest challenges facing the NHS after the COVID-19 crisis is waiting lists. The NHS Confederation has written to the Secretary of State, urging action to unlock a ‘summer of opportunity’. At the same time, half of the general public, according to Ipsos Mori, see ‘improving waiting times for routine operations’ as the top priority in healthcare.
Fighting the system
Last year, we contributed to a report that looked into people's experiences of being on waiting lists. We found that waiting is fundamental to people's perceptions of the quality of care. People talked about a lack of control and an inability to ‘get on with one's life’. Some described ‘fighting’ the system and described the sense of being in an information vacuum for long periods of time.
So if we know that patients need good information on waiting times, why do we make it so hard for them to find it?
The data is, of course, published. You can get it on the nhs.uk website. But it is buried in vast Excel files, with impenetrable layouts and incomprehensible abbreviations. Even experienced health professional can find it hard to make sense of it all.
A huge breakthrough
Our waiting list tool takes waiting times for every treatment in every NHS trust in England and puts it all in one place
Tired of the monthly struggle to work out what on earth was going on with waiting lists, we decided to do something about it. Our waiting list tool takes waiting times for every treatment in every NHS trust in England and puts it all in one place. It is a huge breakthrough – bringing the data into the light and enabling anyone, at any time, to see how any part of the NHS is performing.
The tool will certainly be helpful for patients – but we hope that it will also have value for health professionals. One NHS head of elective care showed us how she had to spend hours downloading NHS England and NHS Improvement spreadsheets, then manually extracting the data she needed to help manage the trust's waiting times. Even this experienced and senior member of staff felt there must be a better way.
GPs, too, could benefit, particularly at the point of referral, when patients are understandably keen to get some idea of how long they might have to wait for treatment. GPs can now see the latest figures for waiting times for any treatment at the click of a mouse. They can easily compare waits at different local trusts. And one more mouse click prints off a simple headlines summary that they can give to patients as a handy aide-memoire.
Actionable insights
The new waiting list tool can help join up insight and understanding across integrated care systems
The NHS Confederation is doing valuable work on ‘reset’. Its report on priorities for primary care covers matters such as tackling the backlog, IT and digital solutions, and the importance of being open and transparent over secondary care waiting lists. Our waiting times tool rolls all of this into one.
The new waiting list tool can help join up insight and understanding across integrated care systems. Analytics like these can be built quickly and affordably. They can – and should – be built into plans for integration and reset.
Miles Sibley is director of the Patient Experience Library. Follow him on Twitter
