Priority 2 - National Elective Coordination Unit
Support the development of a National Elective Coordination Unit (NECU) which will support Boards with their current planned care waiting lists.
Responsible Team: National Elective Coordination Unit (NECU)
NHS Scotland administrative waiting list validation
The NECU team carried out a national waiting list validation exercise on patients waiting more than 52 weeks across 5 specialities. Over the year, the NECU team validated over 88,000 patients with an average removal rate of approximately 9%. This resulted in Boards avoiding costs of approximately £3.5M through their participation in the national validation campaign.
As part of this work, the NECU team successfully introduced a digital validation platform to help support the validation work and allow the team to contact significantly more patients.
NHS Scotland clinical waiting list validation
An initial pilot of clinical validation for diabetes and endocrine patients has been carried out in one Board. Over 700 patients were been validated with a removal rate of 22%. The outcomes from this work will inform further development and further rollout over the next year.
Development of national NECU model
A total of 39 campaigns were conducted across 10 Boards that treated a total of 7,834 patients. The outcomes and findings from these campaigns will inform the ongoing development of the NECU national operating model.
Development of NECU clinical strategy
The high-level ambitions that underpin the NECU clinical strategy have been agreed. Two large-scale strategy events were held during the year to agree the main scope of NECU. NECU will focus on 3 key activities: patient validation, clinical validation, and local campaign capacity work. An operating model to support the clinical strategy has been implemented.
Develop transitional arrangements and agree permanent organisational arrangements for NECU
It has been agreed that CfSD will continue to host NECU whilst the clinical strategy is being developed. This will help to inform the future direction of NECU and the longer-term organisational arrangements required to support this work.
Develop measurement plan and evidence collection process
The NECU team have successfully introduced a digital validation tool to support their work. This includes a performance dashboard which enables real-time monitoring and reporting of activity and performance.
In addition, the team have produced an annual report which includes measurement details about their current activity, outputs and impact.