Recent commentary1 confirms the belief that Wes Streeting will tie increased NHS funding to increased productivity and efficiency. But as Steve Brown points out, assessing productivity can be a nuanced affair. In June, the Kings Fund’s report on productivity in the NHS2 highlighted these issues and demonstrated the different ways in which productivity can be measured at a macro scale. But if the NHS is to improve its productivity it needs to be done from the bottom up, department by department. It is a racing certainty that Wes Streeting will ask NHS departments to evidence their productivity and their efforts to improve it.
So how do you measure your departments productivity? One issue is the fact that consultants, who are the main providers of frontline services, do not work equally. One department with 20 full-time consultants might deliver significantly more work than a department with 30 consultants of which 12 are part-time. In addition, there is significant variation in the type of work consultants in the same department do.
Helpfully though, twenty years ago, the NHS implemented job planning as a contractual obligation. It means that today, departments have a reasonable proxy measure of capacity – Programmed Activities (PAs). PAs can then be translated into the expected number of hours of a particular activity in a period. Productivity is then the actual number of hours of work versus the expected number of hours of work or the job plan "match".
The job plan match % is a good proxy for productivity. It takes into consideration the different quantum of PAs each consultant is contracted to do. The job plan match % can be calculated for the whole department and for each individual. It can highlight which PAs are the least productive or drops in productivity during particular days or a certain times. Once a department is tracking this match %, control charts can highlight the impact of operational changes on this measure. Moreover, if arguments are made for additional capacity through WLIs or outsourcing, the better approach may be to improve the alignment between expected and actual activity.
To understand more about how to easily track the match between job plan and actual activity and measure your departments productivity contact us for a commitment-free chat or sign up for one of our 20 minute lunchtime seminars.
1 Realism around productivity, Steve Brown, July 15th 2024 (https://www.hfma.org.uk/articles/realism-around-productivity)
2 Productivity in the NHS and healthcare sector, King's Fund, June 2024 (https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/insight-and-analysis/data-and-charts/productivity-nhs-health-care-sector)