Working with CHKS has given NEL Commissioning Support Unit confidence in the benchmarking process and use of comparative data

Background
NEL Commissioning Support Unit (NEL CSU) provides expert support and advice to help clinical commissioners to deliver improved health services to local populations. It is the largest CSU in terms of population served with 28 CCGs across London, East Anglia, Essex, Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and Luton and provides an extensive range of services including analytics. In addition to providing business intelligence to over 1,000 users to support their contracting and commissioning activity, NEL CSU also acts as the regional DSCRO and specialised commissioning for London and East of England. Its aim is to help CCGs achieve their ambitions for improving health services by providing specialist advice and information, underpinned by local knowledge and relationships.
 
The challenge
Catherine Potts, Head of Central Business Intelligence, explains NEL CSU wanted to produce a series of models using data to benchmark several indicators such as consultant to consultant referrals and first attendance to follow up rate. The intention was to use benchmarked data to set targets for the eight acute Trust providers across the London area covered by NEL CSU.
 
The solution
Catherine says: “The reason we went to CHKS was because we knew about its expertise and record of working with acute providers. We felt data from CHKS would be trusted and having this element of trust in the data was very important to us.”
 
CHKS worked with the NEL CSU team to create a suite of clinical quality measures based on national Hospital Episode Statistics (HES) data which could be used to benchmark local providers against like for like locally defined peers groups as well as the standard national and other high performing peer groups.
 
“We came up with some definitions and indicators for CHKS to develop using (HES). CHKS spotted one or two things in the HES data and asked us for clarification which was helpful because although we work with HES, we are not experts,” says Catherine.
 
CHKS developed a data set according to defined peer groups and calculated relevant quartiles for each provider. The data was then uploaded into the NEL CSU’s own models. Catherine says: “We then went out to local teams and found that the fact we had used CHKS was helpful in justifying the data. Some providers wanted additional information about others in their peer group which CHKS provided and any queries about the methodology were also resolved by CHKS. One provider was insistent that it should have its own specific peer group so we went back to CHKS and this was created in a timely way.”
 
The benefits of working with CHKS
Catherine says that working with CHKS was a positive experience and NEL SU will be repeating the exercise. It will be asking for more data in 2015 so providers have accessed to a rich data source which gives them everything they need to know about their peers. “We will be able to use this for individual negotiation which puts us in a good position,” she says.
 
CHKS is now working with the NEL CSU on evolving broader benchmarking measures around acute provider productivity to further support their internal teams commissioning support agenda. 
 
“CHKS reporting has made it easy for our own internal analysts to support our quality and performance teams work with CCGs by enabling them to quickly interrogate the benchmarked data to identify any unwarranted variations,” says Catherine.