NACEL launch Data and Improvement Tool (DIT)

The NACEL team are pleased to announce the launch of the NACEL Data and Improvement Tool (DIT) and the reporting of the Quality Survey findings.

All organisations participating in NACEL 2024 can access the Data and Improvement Tool to review their initial Quality Survey findings. To date, NACEL has received 1,076 Quality Surveys from the bereaved.  

The tool will display the Quality Survey findings for participating providers, showcasing each organisation’s position against the national and regional peer group. The Data and Improvement Tool has launched as a beta product, with an expectation that developments will be made between now and July 2024.

As more Quality Survey data is submitted, the Data and Improvement Tool will update to enable real-time reporting of the findings.

Find out how to access the Data and Improvement Tool by following this link https://www.nacel.nhs.uk/how-to-access-the-Data and Improvement Tool

NACEL Quality Improvement Webinars

Need help understanding the Data and Improvement Tool and how to translate data into quality improvement?

Mark your calendar for the first NACEL Quality Improvement webinar taking place on Thursday 9th May, 1pm – 2pm, via MS Teams.

The webinar will focus on how to use the NACEL data for quality improvement, including how to navigate the Data and Improvement Tool. We are delighted to have Dr Sarah Mitchell, NHS England's National Clinical Director for End of Life Care, as a guest speaker.

Register for the webinar here: https://www.nacel.nhs.uk/events/nacel-quality-improvement-webinar

Watch this space or keep an eye on our website for lunch time drop-in sessions happening on the 14th and 16th May to answer any questions and support the use of the Data and Improvement Tool.

For more information about NACEL please visit our website https://www.nacel.nhs.uk/ 

Unveiling the new NHSBN website and NHSFutures Workspace

Following the launch of the 2024/25 Member Work Programme on 11th April 2024. The NHS Benchmarking Network is delighted to unveil its highly anticipated new website, NHSFutures Workspace and new look members’ area.

Website

Taking onboard the feedback we received in our annual member survey, we have developed an easy to navigate, exciting and resourceful website to meet the needs of our members. Whether you're seeking membership information, member project details, the date of an upcoming event or simply to access our members’ area, we have you covered.

You’ll notice several changes to our site compared to the old site. We’ve updated the navigation and refined the categories to focus on our core elements. You’ll now also find our events under the ‘What we do’ section, and an events calendar to  allow you to see all the upcoming events more easily.

To explore the new website and experience all of its new features, visit https://www.nhsbenchmarking.nhs.uk/ today!

Members’ area

Our members’ area has also seen some updates including:

• Projects that your organisation has registered for will now be displayed first under ‘your current projects’ on the home page

• Information on the project stage (e.g. ‘data collection closes in 14 days’).

• The introduction of a sector filter and search box to make it easy for users to find projects of interest.

• The left-hand side of the home screen now shows upcoming events, resources and the new NHSFutures workspace.

• A resources page which pulls together the resources from across the Network projects into one easy access area. Resources found here include project overview reports, infographics, case studies and event documents.  

NHSFutures Workspace

Feedback received in the member survey and from consultation on our website Forum page, recommended that the Network should have its own NHSFutures workspace. We have now launched our NHSFutures Workspace, please take a look and let us know your thoughts (https://future.nhs.uk/BenchmarkingNetwork).

The workspace aims to bring together individuals from our member organisations to network and collaborate with each other as well as with the Network’s Support Team. We encourage you to participate and generate discussion topics in our dedicated sector forums, sharing how you have used Network data for good practice.

On the left hand side of the workspace homepage, you’ll see our resources and forums. We have broken these down by sector and we welcome thoughts on whether a further breakdown by project would be helpful.

To join our workspace: follow this link https://future.nhs.uk/BenchmarkingNetwork and click join at the top of the page. Once access has been granted, you’ll be free to explore all the resources available. Over the coming weeks we will continue to add content to the site, so we encourage you to check back regularly.

Finally, we’d like to thank all of our members for their contributions and feedback to make these updates possible. If you have any feedback on the website, members’ area or NHSFutures workspace, please do get in contact at enquiries@nhsbenchmarking.nhs.uk.

Our 2023/24 Membership Year in Review!!

Click on the image above to view the 2023/24 Annual Report.

As we wrap up the 2023/24 year, we are pleased to share our review of the benchmarking year and feedback from our annual member survey.

The Annual Report encapsulates many of the achievements and milestones that the NHS Benchmarking Network has accomplished over the past year.

Highlights include:

• Delivery of an insightful member work programme with over 700,000 data points received from members.

• Updates to our Terms of Membership to include data sharing between members.

• Technology developments to enhance the member experience.

Every membership year we give members the opportunity to feedback about their experience through our member survey. This survey captures what they like about being members and improvements they would like to see.  

As we launch the 2024/25 member work programme, we have taken this opportunity to respond to members on the work we have done to address feedback received in the recent survey. The broad topics of feedback include data definitions, data collection process, dissemination of reports and outputs and communications.  The full feedback can be found here.

Members can provide feedback to the Support Team throughout the year by:

• Joining one of our Reference Groups to be involved in the development of the Network and subject areas

• Emailing the project teams directly, email address can be found on the members’ area and website

• Speaking to the team, all the project specific phone numbers are available on the members’ area

• Attending a drop-in session that will be running throughout data collection and validation

• Joining or starting a discussion on our brand new NHS Futures workspace

We would like to thank our members and stakeholders for their continued support, engagement and feedback through 2023/24. We look forward to continued collaboration during 2024/25.

If you have any queries about the 2023/24 Annual Member Work Programme Report or member survey feedback, please contact the Support Team on enquiries@nhsbenchmarking.nhs.uk.

The NHS Benchmarking Network offer two types of membership plans, an Insight membership and Foundation membership.

In addition, the NHS Benchmarking Network delivers National Audits, a workforce work programme and a bespoke commissioned programme.

Blog: Northern Ireland Health and Social Care Trust Workshops

From 7th-8th February 2024, Freddie Girling and Sarah Handby from the NHS Benchmarking Network’s “Managing Frailty in the Acute Setting” project team travelled over to Northern Ireland to do a series of workshops.

The workshops formed part of a programme of work, commissioned by the Northern Ireland Public Health Agency, to help the Northern Ireland Health and Social Care Trusts get the most out participating in the project. The project benchmarks data on services dedicated to the care older people in acute hospitals, and the workshops were designed to help Trusts turn this data into actionable insight that they can use to improve outcomes for older, often acutely frail, patients who are at risk from an extended stay in secondary care.

The workshops included a presentation from NHSBN team, with findings specific to each participating Trust, followed by a structured discussion facilitated by the Alison Patterson and Michelle Laverty from the Northern Ireland Public Health Agency.

Day 1: Wednesday 7th February

On the first day of the trip, the project team travelled to the Seamus Heaney Homeplace in Bellaghy, to meet with a delegation from the Northern Health and Social Care Trust. After the findings presentation, discussion turned to the ways in which dedicated care of the elderly wards can be set up to prevent patient deconditioning, including schemes to get patients out of their beds frequently, and signage around the ward that is appropriate for patients with dementia. This discussion was supported by examples from responses to free text metrics that were submitted to the project in 2023. Short stay bedded assessment and admissions units for frail and older patients were also discussed, about which a significant number of new metrics were added to the project for 2023.

Day 2: Thursday 8th February

The second day of workshops was hosted at the Assembly Buildings Conference Centre in Belfast, with a morning session scheduled for the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust and an afternoon session scheduled for the South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust. Discussion at the morning workshop revolved around project findings on the different pathways that older patients in Northern Ireland are discharged on, following a stay in an inpatient ward. In response, the Northern Ireland Public Health Agency suggested that they would investigate creating a standardised process for coding discharge pathways in Northern Ireland.

Representatives from the Belfast Trust also expressed an interest in submitting more data on their Allied Health Professional workforce, which is now being built into the 2024 project. The South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust began developing an acute frailty team in their Emergency Department in response to findings from the Managing Frailty project in 2022.

As such, during the afternoon session, representatives from the Trust were interested to discuss how they might use project findings to track the growth and impact of this team, both this year and in the future.

Conclusion

All the workshops were very successful, with fantastic engagement throughout each session. Following the two days in Northern Ireland, the project team hosted an online workshop for representatives from the Western Health and Social Care Trust (who were unfortunately unable to schedule an in person event), and the Northern Ireland Public Health Agency commissioned another year of the bespoke Northern Ireland Managing Frailty project. We look forward to continuing to work with them, and the Northern Ireland Health and Social Care Trusts, in the future.

NHSBN 2024/25 Vision, Values and Objectives

Vision, values, and objectives are important components in any organisation’s strategic framework. Alongside the NHS Benchmarking Network’s (NHSBN or the Network) Constitution and Terms of Membership, they support a governance structure for the effective and efficient operation of the Network and ensure we remain member led.

We would like to remind you of our vision and values, whilst also sharing the Network’s updated objectives for 2024/25.

Vision and Values

The Networks vision and values lay the core foundations for how the Network is run and governed. This year, the vision and values remain the same as 2023/24.The Networks values are:

• Excellence – Always striving to be the best we can be, in everything we do

• Respect – Value everyone, acknowledge members’ unique experiences, work together to deliver improvement

• Integrity – Be transparent, be realistic, be honest

The Networks vision is to enable members to improve patient outcomes, raise health standards and deliver quality health and care services through data excellence, benchmarking and the sharing of innovation.

Objectives for 2024/25

Our work is guided by a set of objectives agreed annually by the Steering Group on behalf of the Network. As with previous years’ objectives, our core focus is on putting our members at the heart of the Network - allowing us to work together, enable curiosity and find the answer to the 'so what' questions. The objectives for 2024/25 are:

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What’s next?

Building on our updated objectives, if you’re interested in joining our member led community or renewing membership for the 2024/25– now is the time to do so!

Over the coming weeks, our member work programme projects will be opening for registration and data collection. To find out more you can either view our member work programme calendar or get in contact with the membership team here.

With thanks to all our members for their continued support, we look forward to working with you all through the coming year.

Health and Care Workforce Programme 2024 Launches!

The NHS Benchmarking Network have been working with NHS England over the last five years to develop a Workforce Programme to provide data and insight to support the growth and retention of the workforce across health and social care. 

Together we have worked hard to build a profile of where services are delivered, to understand the shape and size of the workforce across all sectors. We continue to build on the progress made to date, to support the achievement of the targets and ambitions recently set out in the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan

We are pleased to announce the Workforce Projects that will be included in 2024 along with  launch dates, submission deadlines and report publication timelines.  Details can be found here

Details of the specific projects will be released over the coming weeks and months.

We will continue to review and reduce the data burden wherever possible whilst still delivering against key project requirements.

At the same time as launching the 2024 Health and Care Workforce Programme we are pleased to launch the programme dedicated website.  The content will grow over the coming months as 2024 projects come online and we add project specifications and links to support from the team.

Each project page includes:

• Options to register an interest in participating in a project, links to contact the team and FAQs

• A brief project overview although more details are included within the census collection templates

• Links to walkthrough live session and videos as well as links to drop In sessions throughout the data collection period providing an opportunity to raise queries with the team

• Collection templates – locked for use for submission and unlocked for use locally.

• National report from 2023.

We will also include details of events for 2024 and news items related to the programme.

Full dates for the 2024/25 Member Work Programme are now available!

The start of the NHS Benchmarking Network’s 2024/25 member work programme is right around the corner, with 3 projects opening for registration next month! Following the release of our work programme in January, we’re delighted to provide further information for you. This additional information includes dates throughout the year for all projects, covering:

• Registration

• Data collection

• Validation

• Reporting

• Events

On our member work programme calendar, each project will now show the exact dates for each project stage, allowing members to plan and coordinate their project participation. Furthermore, the event dates will also allow you to save the date in your diary to ensure you don’t miss our highly popular Benchmarking Findings webinars! Registration for these events will open later in the year and members will be contacted when appropriate.

To ensure uninterrupted access to the member work programme, please ensure your organisation has provided a purchase order for the upcoming membership renewal. Contact Kim Burton, Network Development Manager, if you have any queries.

To download your copy of the work programme with full dates, please click here. You can find out further details about each of the 24/25 projects on the projects webpage. If you have any questions, please contact the team at enquiries@nhsbenchmarking.nhs.net

Not yet a member?

If you are from a non-member organisation, now is a great time to join to engage with the 2024/25 member work programme. We invite you to have a conversation about how the Network community can support you in achieving your priorities. Please get in touch with the Support Team to arrange this.