Outpatient services improvement guide

NHS England has updated the improvement guide to support clinical and operational teams to improve the outpatient care provided to patients.

Alongside this guide, improvement analytics can be used to diagnose issues and identify opportunities to improve care and track improvement over time. The improvement metrics will evolve as data collected nationally better reflects new care models, however alone they do not give the complete picture for flow and the opportunities to improve patient outcomes across the whole cycle of care.

Sections include optimising referrals to ensure faster access for those people who will benefit from specialist elective care and optimising post-treatment care.

The document contains links to a range of resources and case studies including:

• advice and guidance services 
• e-RS dashboard
• Model Health System data
• GIRFT ‘further faster’ specialty-level standards.
• remote consultations
• remote monitoring
• PIFU

and a range of resources addressing workforce planning and deployment.

This is an interim document, and NHS England has invited feedback.

Full document: www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/outpatient-services-a-clinical-and-operational-improvement-guide.