Data

Our data team have been working hard from the outset. Unfortunately, much of the data we have been supplied in a report called “ Dr Foster” is late and incomplete. This has been a national problem.

We have looked at how different practices have differing disease prevalences and how this affects their budgetary requirements. Our calculations show that current budgets and so-called fair shares budget correlates with a ratio of 0.91 or 0.92 with our Need Index. [Click here to see Need Index spreadsheet]

We have used a method to get the referrals made by each individual clinician much faster than Dr Foster. This has allowed us to produce a sheet for each practice for doctors to compare the number of referrals made with their colleagues.[Click her to see sheet]
Other PBC consortia in the County are keen to adopt this approach.

We have visited 7 practices to discuss referrals.

We continue to supply data on activity and costings to assist in service redesign decisions.

We continue to monitor budget position and look forward to receiving monthly updates from the PCT rather than the current quarterly statements.

We note that over half the activity in our budgets is in fact generated either by consultant follow up appointments or referrals from consultant to consultant. We need to look at this in more depth.