Innovations in outpatient services
RSET investigates the effectiveness of innovations to improve outpatient services and looks at how outpatient activity has changed in England since 2008. This is a RSET project (Rapid Service Evaluation Team), a collaboration between the Nuffield Trust and UCL and funded by NIHR.
Overview
The NHS Long Term Plan set an ambitious aim of reducing the number of face-to-face outpatient attendances by 30 million over the next 10 years. In part, this is a reaction to the huge growth in appointments and attendances over the last decade and in part to encourage better ways of delivering care, reducing inefficiencies and improving patient experience and outcomes. One particular innovation that is being rolled out extensively across the NHS is patient-initiated follow-ups (PIFU), where patients decide themselves whether and when they want to attend for a follow-up appointment, rather than keeping to a time set by the hospital.
The objectives of the research are to:
- Review the evidence on the effectiveness of innovations to improve outpatient services and understand the factors that influence how innovations are implemented.
- Describe how outpatient activity has changed in England since 2008, including outlining how services have responded to the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic.
- Use time series data analysis methods to identify trusts and specialties whose outpatient activity appears to have changed in practically significant, and positive ways. For example, this might be a growth of non-face-to-face appointments, or a reduction in cancellations and did-not-attends.
- Use contextual data to identify whether any changes identified might be explained by, for example, changes in population characteristics.
- Carry out interviews with a small number of trusts to investigate whether specific trends identified might be attributable to particular innovations in outpatient services.
- Undertake a mixed methods evaluation of PIFU. This will include an assessment of its impact on measures of outpatient activity, factors that influence its implementation and the experiences of patients and staff.
Read the full study protocol.
Outputs
Blogs and explainers
Reports and round-ups
Presentations
- HSRUK 2023 Conference workshop: Patient-initiated follow-up: Findings from a mixed-methods evaluation – watch here
Project team
- Chris Sherlaw-Johnson
- Sarah Reed
- Nadia Crellin
- Theo Georghiou
- Camille Oung
- Rachel Hutchings
- Cyril Labont
- Angus Ramsey
- Jonathan Spencer
- Stephanie Kumpunen
- Pei Li Ng
- Stuti Bagri