Having had experience of operating in a customer service environment, I am well used to developing and using Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) to assess service delivery.
However, I find the new National Health Service Commissioning Board has taken KPI’s to a mind-blowing level with the 51 indicators likely to be used in their NHS Outcomes Framework.
It makes one think about the huge challenges of balancing KPI’s in such a system. We are talking life and death here, not whether the phone is answered in 5 seconds or 30 seconds as in many service operations.
Trying to agree and actually monitor the measures that cover the work of the 1.4 million people involved in the health service is a huge undertaking in itself. Ensuring that the right decisions are taken on which measures will be the priority for improvement is even more complex.
Whilst space prevents me from reviewing the Outcomes Framework in detail, it is worth picking up the five top level domains under which the indicators sit:
- Preventing people from dying prematurely
- Enhancing quality of life for people with long-term conditions
- Helping people to recover from episodes of ill health or following injury
- Ensuring that people have a positive experience of care
- Treating and caring for people in a safe environment and protect them from avoidable harm
Having to balance the various competing demands on the healthcare budget is nothing new. What is new is the people who will have to do it in the future. Over coming months the Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCG’s), typically clusters of 15-20 GP practices, are going to have to wrestle with this dilemma whilst also ensuring their own practice is pursuing Public and Patient Engagement (PPE) as required by the NHS Commissioning Board. I can already imagine some potential national newspaper headlines on the occasions that GP’s get decisions “wrong” in the eyes of disgruntled patients.
Whilst I have a great deal of faith in the clinical decisions GP’s make, I just wonder how many of them have the management, customer service and media skills to cope if the Health and Social Care Bill is enacted and they find themselves attempting to balance these KPI’s. Righttrack, one of the UK’s leading learning and development consultancies, would certainly be happy to offer its services to help equip GP’s for these challlenges.
By Jon Davies| Righttrack’s Digital Marketing Manager
PS For GP’s looking to make a start on addressing PPE why not take a look at Righttrack’s Managing Patient Relationships programme.