Bureaucracy busters set to work on NHS

A bureaucracy busting campaign is being launched to reduce the burden of data collection for the NHS.

Health secretary Jeremy Hunt has asked the Health and Social Care Information Centre to provide a plan “for reducing bureaucracy and burden that diverts valuable resources away from the delivery of safe, and compassionate care."

The organisation is launching a ‘Let’s Bust Bureaucracy Together’ campaign in October to transform the way the NHS thinks about managing burden and bureaucracy, says a paper presented to the Informatics Services Commissioning Group July meeting.

A key focus of the project is to establish a single dataset and move towards an electronic patient record to address the burden.

“Our plans for discharging this role will ensure that considerations about ‘burden’ are made throughout the ‘lifecycle’ of each data collection from the point when a proposal is being explored, through its design and delivery, and up to the point that it is decommissioned,” the report says.

The project will include; a national panel of ‘bureaucracy busters’; a week-long snapshot of audits carried out across 50 different sites; and a national conference in October to mark the launch of the campaign.

It will focus on “standardisation and levelling up of audits and collection platforms,” as well as web-based tools and information to support effective data collections.

“The campaign aims to transform the way we think about and manage burden and bureaucracy. It will be rooted in the front line, and use social media to maximise engagement. It will involve all the national bodies associated with national data collections,” says the paper.

The ISCG is chaired by Tim Kelsey, NHS England’s director for patients and information, and the group has been asked to sponsor and participate in the campaign.

The NHS Confederation is also involved in the project and is tendering for a consultancy firm “to conduct a number of deep dives at provider level, looking into data collections at a local level and also how commissioners’ requirements will develop over time,” say minutes from the ISCG June board meeting.

“The NHS Confederation will report back to the Secretary of State for Health in September 2013 with a set of short-term actions. "The challenge will then be to develop this into a more strategic piece of work.”

Dr Mark Davies from the HSCIC is interviewed in Insight this week. Dr Davis is one of the headline speakers at EHI Live 2013, where he will be discussing the impact of big data on healthcare. EHI Live 2013 is a two day conference and exhibition at the NEC in Birmingham on 5-6 November. This year, the conference is free for all visitors, and registration is open now.