• Analytical Support
• Screening and Surveillance
• Indicator and Measurement & Information Knowledge Management 
   

Analytical Support

This team is made up of 29 analysts and associated staff, who between them:

• Support staff who work in the operations group in their work with healthcare providers.
• Provide analytical support to reviews and national studies.
• Support the delivery of our independent healthcare information strategy, a long-term project that aims to improve the data produced by the sector.

The team is divided into three sub-teams:

• Senior analytical advisors
• Regions analysts
• Reviews and studies

Their work ranges from analysing and managing data to working with staff in our Operations Group, to ensure data is understood and used confidently.

The Analytical Support team also works on a number of corporate projects. For example, the development of the Information Cabinet, a project designed to make use of all the information we store about healthcare organisations and to combine it with information from external sources. The Information Cabinet will enable our staff to work more effectively with the organisations we regulate in the NHS and the independent healthcare sector.

Back to top

Screening and Surveillance

This team helps to prioritise the Commission's schedule of inspections and reviews of healthcare services. The team uses information to identify healthcare organisations that may have problems that we need to look into. The team also ensures that we use information appropriately, if we do follow up with an inspection or investigation.

We do this, for example, through the screening/cross-checking of NHS trusts' declarations of performance against the Government's core standards for the NHS, and by monitoring information for topic-based reviews of services, including work to ensure that healthcare organisations comply with the hygiene code, and use controlled drugs and ionising regulation safely.

We use the term "surveillance" to mean the ongoing systematic collation, analysis, interpretation and dissemination of healthcare-related data in our work as the independent regulator of healthcare. Surveillance is the first part of the Healthcare Commission's 'surveillance-response' approach to regulation. This is when we use local intelligence about healthcare organisations to trigger an operational response, if we have concerns.

We also analyse individual ‘outlier' indicators and use information from the independent healthcare sector. If the Commission undertakes an investigation, the Surveillance team provides analytical support to the Investigations team by analysing the information and evidence they collect to ensure it supports the conclusions and recommendations in their final report.

Back to top

Indicator and Measurement & Information Knowledge Management

Indicators and Measurement

The Indicators and Measurement team plays a key role in the annual health check, the Healthcare Commission's system for assessing and rating the performance of NHS healthcare organisations in England each year. Its main areas of responsibility are:

• Developing and delivering the Commission's assessment of the NHS's performance relating to the commitments and national priories in its operating framework.
• Developing and delivering the "quality of services" part of our ratings of NHS trusts in the annual health check, including national, regional and trust level analysis.
• Developing and delivering a set of benchmarked indicators for primary care trusts, to support their commissioning of healthcare services.
• Developing and delivering a set of benchmarked indicators to assist trusts in signing off their declarations of performance against the Government's core standards.
• Developing and delivering benchmarked indicators relating to specific services or pathways of care, to contribute to healthcare organisations' local intelligence and capacity for improvement.

The Indicators & Measurement team is divided into three sub-teams:

• Development: responsible for developing the indicators that measure the performance of NHS trusts against national priorities that are set by the Department of Health.
  
• Delivery team: responsible for publications of data on the Commission's website, data collection, database maintenance, and scoring rules and models. The team is also responsible for the "quality of services" part of trusts' ratings in our annual health check of the NHS.
  
• Project management: responsible for all aspects of planning and managing risks and issues, and making sure that the team sets achievable and realistic goals.

Information Knowledge Management (IKM)

The Commission's data and information functions are integrated in the IKM team. This integrated function provides a central store of data to the organisation and a single point for information and advice about its use, quality and fitness for purpose.

The team's main areas of responsibility are:

• Patient datasets
• Data management
• Records management
• Data quality
• Data catalogue
• Data request form
• A web submission forms service

Back to top