
Newcastle University NHS App Promotion
As part of the national Primary Care Access Recovery Plan, NECS was commissioned to support GP practices with mainly increasing utilisation of the NHS App, as well as increasing awareness of the App and its functionalities.

Monkwearmouth Health Centre and NHS App Support via the PCDSH
This case study examines how Monkwearmouth Health Centre was supported by the Primary Care Digital Support Hub (PCDSH) with increasing utilisation of the NHS App.

Gainford Surgery and NHS App Support via the PCDSH
As part of the national Primary Care Access Recovery Plan (PCARP) programme of work issued by NHS England, NECS was commissioned by North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care Board (NENC ICB) to provide support to GPs within the local area.

Online appointment booking via the NHS App notification functionality – Houghton Medical Group
This case study examines how Houghton Medical Group inadvertently increased NHS App utilisation among patients via their directly bookable online appointment process, particularly for the Flu Vaccination clinics.

Durham University NHS App promotion
As part of the national Primary Care Access Recovery Plan, NECS were commissioned to support GP practices with increasing utilisation and awareness of the NHS App and its functionalities.

Proxy medication ordering in care homes
Managing medication for care home residents is a complex process that requires accuracy, efficiency, and coordination between multiple healthcare professionals.

NHS App Implementation Plan published by the PCDSH
As part of the national Primary Care Access Recovery Plan (PCARP) programme of work issued by NHS England, NECS was commissioned by NENC ICB to provide support to GPs within the area.

Herrington Medical Centre – Prospective Record Access Q&A
The implementation of Prospective Record Access at Herrington Medical Centre, Sunderland, has been a resounding success by fostering patient empowerment, reducing administrative workload, and enhancing trust between practice and patient.

Healthier and Fairer – NENC Deep End Network
NECS was commissioned by NENC ICB deliver an ICB funded network of GP practices across the North East that work in areas of blanket socio-economic deprivation within the Healthier and Fairer health inequalities programme, to meet ICB requirements whilst maintaining the member-led ethos of the network.

Transformation and Delivery – Waiting Well Programme
In 2021, NENC ICB developed a high-level model for supporting the longest waiters for surgery to prepare physically and psychologically for their procedure in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which further exacerbated existing health inequalities in our most vulnerable communities.

Development of Frailty Case Finding Intelligence Reports
The Ageing Well Workstream of the North East and North Cumbria (NENC) Integrated Care Board (ICB) required a means to improve the identification and coding of frailty within the Primary Care Data Set (PCDS).

Perinatal Mental Health Needs Assessment – Coventry City Council
Coventry City Council’s Public Health team was required to develop a health needs assessment (HNA) for perinatal mental health in the city, which would be used to influence future commissioning decisions.

Population Health Management – NENC Targeted Alcohol Intervention and Brief Advice Project
NENC ICB commissioned NECS to identify target cohorts of the population that were less likely to have received alcohol screening and interventions, and who would benefit from them the most to increase recording of alcohol screening and alcohol identification and brief advice (IBA) in primary care.

Population Health Management Long Term Strategy
NECS Consultancy was commissioned by Bristol, North Somerset & South Gloucestershire ICB to work with six localities to: align planning support with an evidenced based approach; develop and support population health management approaches; support the localities with emerging priorities; and provide advice on ICB and locality led implementation and delivery.

Support to reducing health inequalities in North East Ambulance Service (NEAS)
NEAS commissioned NECS to provide dedicated programme management and analytical capacity to support NEAS in achieving their ambitions in relation to health inequalities. The role was to continue and expand upon the work completed by NEAS’ Public Health Registrar in respect of their health inequalities programme.

NENC Approach to Inclusion Health
NHSE launched the National Framework for Inclusion Health which sets out the actions required of NHS organisations in identifying and meeting the needs of people from inclusion health groups. Inclusion health groups consist of people that experience poor access, uptake, experience, and outcomes of healthcare services due to stigma and marginalisation.

Population Health Management Programme – HNY ICB
NECS was commissioned by Humber and North Yorkshire (HNY) Integrated Care System (ICS) in June 2022 to deliver a comprehensive Population Health Management (PHM) programme across the ICS. The aim of the two-year programme was to work with Places, Local Care Partnerships and Primary Care Networks (PCNs) to use a PHM approach to help reduce existing health inequalities and improve health outcomes for the local populations.

Pharmaceutical Health Needs Assessment – Sunderland City Council
NECS was commissioned by Sunderland City Council in November 2021 to produce a comprehensive Pharmaceutical Needs Assessment (PNA) programme to meet its statutory obligations, identify any gaps in pharmaceutical services provision and inform commissioning decisions regarding pharmaceutical services for the local population across the ICS.

Establishment of the North East North Cumbria Prevention Board
Following publication of the North East System Transformation Plans (STP) in 2016, which identified prevention as a critical priority for system transformation, and in alignment with the recommendations of the Closing the Gap in the North East report, a mandate was established to create a region-wide Prevention Board and workstream for the North East and North Cumbria.

Reducing Alcohol Related Harm
NECS worked with North East and North Cumbria (NENC) ICS to support a project which aimed to improve the recording of alcohol screening and brief advice in primary care settings.

Contract Management Support – NHS England public health programme team
Having successfully supported the safe and effective legal merger of former NHS England (NHSE) with NHS Digital and Health Education, NECS was commissioned to enable the new NHSE structure.

New NHS England Programme
Having successfully supported the safe and effective legal merger of former NHS England (NHSE) with NHS Digital and Health Education, NECS was commissioned to enable the new NHSE structure.

Solving problems in emergency care and neurodiagnostic services
As part of our ‘general facilitation’ offer, we designed and ran a series of problem-solving workshops for North-East and North Cumbria ICB to understand the challenges the region was facing with regards to emergency care, ambulance handover and neurodiagnostic services.

Improving the Healthcare Travel Cost Scheme: a Lean Review
The NHS Healthcare Travel Costs Scheme (HTCS) provides support for eligible individuals with transport costs when they are referred to hospital or other NHS premises for specialist NHS treatment or diagnostic tests. A review by NHS England in 2021 highlighted there were variable and complex processes for patients claiming travel expenses with delays in reimbursement of up to 90 days.

Gaining public insight on reshaping health services in Nottingham
Nottingham and Nottinghamshire CCG conducted a phase of pre-consultation public engagement over November and December 2020 on proposals to transform hospital services at Nottingham University Hospitals (NUH) NHS Trust.

Public consultation on the future of urgent care services at the Friarage Hospital in Northallerton
The NECS Communications and Engagement team provided planning, delivery and advisory support to the urgent care consultation led by NHS Hambleton, Richmondshire and Whitby Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) which took place between 13th September 2019 and 17th January 2020.

Creating and launching the Humber and North Yorkshire Integrated Care System identity
The challenge for the NECS Communication and Engagement team was to project manage and deliver a refreshed identity for the new ICS, complete with a set of public channels of communication including a new website, brand, marketing collateral and provide guidance for the new brand’s use across the newly-established ICS, all within a six-week timescale.

Digital technology supporting faster discharge in the North East
An NHS Trust in the North East, South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Foundation Trust, is using data to work with social care colleagues to help patients leave hospital faster.

Clinical safety assessment of the Professional Records Standards Body new diabetic standards
The Professional Records Standards Body (PRSB) was commissioned by NHS England to produce standards for sharing diabetes information across all care settings safely and accurately between digital systems, with no loss of meaning to support safe, high-quality care. This also includes the self-management data from digital applications and medical devices such as glucose monitors.

Clinical safety assessment of the HealthPathways Health IT system
HealthPathways, a Health IT system developed by Streamliners in New Zealand, supports the delivery of localised relevant pathways to general practitioners and other clinicians. The system assists with informed and supportive decision making at the point of care, within any locally agreed health policies.

Bury Hospice transformation
The challenge Bury Hospice’s vision is to ensure all patients and families in the locality receive compassionate and outstanding palliative and end of life care. To realise this vision, the hospice developed a portfolio of transformation work and commissioned NECS...

NHSE&I East Vaccination Programme
The challenge NECS was brought in to help ensure there was sufficient workforce across the East region to deliver the COVID-19 and Flu Vaccination Programme. This included an ambitious retention programme which aimed to retain all the volunteers and temporary staff...

New NHS England Transformation Directorate: filling of posts implementation process
The challenge Background: Merger and efficiencies: This major transition programme followed the merging of NHS England, Health Education England and NHS Digital, and the requirement to make circa 30-40% efficiencies. Staffing restructure: The filling of posts...

Vanguard for the Framework for Integrated Care (Community)
The challenge In 2021, an opportunity arose for Humber and North Yorkshire Health and Care Integrated Care System (HNY HCP ICS) to bid for funding from NHS England’s national health and justice team alongside their partners, including the health, local authority and...

Participative organisational re-design and target operating model development
The challenge In March 2023, NHS England announced that the running cost allowance (RCA) for ICBs would be reduced by 30% in real terms from April 2025. Bristol, North Somerset & South Gloucestershire Integrated Care Board (BNSSG ICB) aimed to reduce its operating...

Procurement of specialist led Primary Care orthodontic services
Challenge The NECS Healthcare Services Procurement team undertook a large collaborative procurement exercise to deliver 77 individual specialist led primary care orthodontic services contracts (lots) across the North of England with a total contract value in excess of...

NHSE Health and Justice provider selection regime overview and training
Challenge The NECS Healthcare Procurement team was contacted by the Head of NHS England Health and Justice for North East and Yorkshire requesting guidance in respect of new procurement legislation which came into force from 1 January 2024 for healthcare services. The...

Hartlepool Borough Council – Children and Young People’s Joint Strategic Needs Assessment to inform Family Hub provision
In October 2021, the Government announced £301.75m to transform Start for Life and Family Hub services in 75 local authorities across England. The ambition of the Family Hub programme is for every family to receive the support they need when they need it.

Enhancing social care brokering in Telford and Wrekin
The challenge Ian Martin, Procurement and Market Development Officer at Telford and Wrekin Council, spoke to Alex Arvidsson, Capacity Tracker Regional Lead in the Midlands and South-West, about the system benefits to their Brokerage team. Our response: How has...

Capacity Tracker puts care home information at our fingertips
The challenge Denis Greenwood manages the Residential Finding Service, part of the bed brokerage function at Lancashire County Council. Denis and his team have a comprehensive knowledge of the local care home market and work diligently to ensure people in Lancashire...

Real benefits to using Capacity Tracker in the South West
The challenge Emma Smith is the Registered Home Manager at Eagles Mount Care Home (part of Luxury Care) in Poole, Dorset. Emma has been with Eagles Mount for two years and has worked within the Luxury Care group for 10 years. Luxury Care has six premier care homes...

How Capacity Tracker data underpins intelligence and insight for decision-makers
The challenge Jason Felstead, Lead for Quality Improvement for Oxfordshire County Council, explains how an automated data feed (API) from Capacity Tracker supports data intelligence gathering for Adult Social Care in Oxfordshire and, more widely, the Integrated Care...

HJIS e-Learning Portal
Challenge Healthcare teams within the secure and detained estate are very busy, often struggling to attend traditional, face-to-face training sessions. In order to ensure access to training materials and advice and guidance on using SystmOne at difficult times, e.g....

GMS, GP2GP and SCR upload within the Secure and Detained Estate
Challenge GMS (General Medical Services) registration is the mechanism by which patients are registered at their community GP surgery, and it is this functionality that allows the electronic transfer of patient information between clinical systems, the GP2GP transfer....

HJIS Data Quality Improvement Work
Challenge The contract was awarded in 2016 to The Phoenix Partnership (TPP), supplier of SystmOne. The North East London Commissioning Support Unit (NEL CSU) Health and Justice team was then commissioned to manage the preparations for a new system and delivery of new...

Procurement of Child Health Information Services for NHSE East of England, Greater Manchester and Midlands (East and West)
The challenge The purpose of Child Health Information Services (CHIS) and the systems that support them is to ensure that each child in England has an accurate active record supporting delivery of public health interventions including screening and childhood and...

Targeting Interventions: Humber and North Yorkshire Health & Care Partnership
The challenge A requirement was identified in York Place within Humber and North Yorkshire ICB to create a proactive social prescribing model for targeting cohorts of patients who could benefit targeted interventions. York Place received funding from the ICBs...

Use of OPTICA in Integrated Single Point of Access (ISPA) NTHFT
The team in the Integrated Single Point of Access (ISPA), known nationally as the Transfer of Care Hub, receives all the referrals from North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust and other surrounding hospitals for patients who require ongoing community services on discharge.

How Torbay Council achieves 100% compliance with Health and Care Act 2022: Adult Social Care information provisions utilising Capacity Tracker
The challenge Sarah McPherson, Commissioning Support Officer at Torbay Local Authority, shares how the council engages adult social care (ASC) providers to ensure they achieve 100% compliance with the Health and Care Act 2022: Adult Social Care information provisions....

Becoming Disability Positive at work
The challenge The NHS England London Equality & Inclusion team asked us to help introduce their new initiative encouraging staff to be confident in sharing their disability status and getting individualised support. Our response We contacted the NHS disability...

‘#CutCovid’ CYP awareness campaign
The challenge Previous work indicated that Covid messaging was failing to reach and inform older children and young people living in Medway. A key challenge was to come up with new and creative ways of framing evolving guidance that appealed to older children and...

Increasing awareness of maternity services in North Central London
The challenge North Central London LMS (NCL LMS) needed to increase awareness of the new personalised maternity services website across North Central London. Our response We researched the local population and identified that Facebook and Google were the most suitable...

Saving lives with cervical screening: NECS for NHS England
The challenge The NHS Cervical Screening Programme aims to reduce the number of women developing cervical cancer in England, by improving the uptake of cervical screening, enabling the early detection and treatment of disease to reduce mortality rates. In October...

NTHFT Discharge Project
OPTICA (Optimised Patient Tracking & Intelligent Choices Application) is a secure cloud application, built by NECS in collaboration with health and social care. It tracks all admitted patients and the tasks relating to their discharge in real-time through their hospital journey.

Waiting Well York HCP
The challenge As the elective waiting list continues to increase and with patients waiting longer for their operations or procedures, York Health and Care Partnership, working alongside Nimbuscare, wanted to reassure patients that they had not been forgotten. They...

SystmOne upgrade
Challenge The Health and Justice Information Service (HJIS) is a national programme in England to implement the complex upgrade to the national prison health care system, SystmOne, bringing it up to date and in line with other clinical systems used in the community. ...

NECS Covid remote access
Challenge To enable efficient and safe working during the COVID-19 pandemic, the ICT Service Delivery team at NECS was asked to rapidly mobilise a Use Your Own Device (UYOD) Remote Access solution within NECS itself. The objective was to provide additional remote...

Procurement for Prisons
The challenge A large number of contracts which provided healthcare services to Her Majesty's Prisons (HMP) in the North West locality were due to expire and the NECS Healthcare Procurement team was asked to lead the procurement of new services for NHS England and NHS...

Data Quality programme
The challenge The Data Quality (DQ) programme started in the summer of 2021 and NECS was commissioned to support acute providers to improve the accuracy of their waiting list data. The programme specifically wanted to: Ensure system capacity was utilised only for...

National Elective Restoration team
The challenge The National Elective Restoration team within NECS plays a vital role in supporting the delivery plan for tackling the substantial backlog of NHS care, which sits at the highest number of people waiting to receive planned NHS care since records began in...

Advice and Guidance
The challenge Advice and Guidance (A&G) services are central to the vision outlined in the NHS Long Term Plan of 'one click away' specialist advice and guidance for GPs, linked to the aim of reducing face-to-face outpatient appointments (NHS England &...

Pharmacy Workforce
The challenge Over recent years, the primary care pharmacy workforce has changed significantly, due to a range of national healthcare policy developments. As a result, there have been changes in employment models, leadership capacity, and career development. Due to...

NHSE Midlands Elective recovery
The challenge An NHS England and Improvement (NHSE/I) review in July 2021, highlighted that if no intervention or action was taken by March 2022, 51,568 patients within the Midlands would be waiting over 104 weeks (104+) for their elective surgery. Pressure on the...

JUCD Workforce Development plan
The challenge Joined up Care Derbyshire (JUCD), the Integrated Care System (ICS) for Derbyshire, had 11 teams of Business Intelligence (BI) professionals spread across the organisations that formed part of the ICS. JUCD wished to develop a hybrid BI function to...

NICE strategy review
The challenge NICE developed its current Implementation Strategy in 2017 to support the effective use of NICE guidance and standards. NICE wished to publish its new Implementation Strategy in December 2021, to support the delivery of strategic Pillar Three 'Effective...

Prevalence of obesity in Tees Valley
Tees Valley Combined Authority wanted to determine whether the prevalence of obesity in the Tees Valley is greater than in other areas of the UK, what the causes might be and the impact upon the economy of the region.

Chartered Society of Physiotherapy Workforce Demand project
The challenge NECS's Business Analytics and Insight team was commissioned to work with the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CPS) in England to analyse the size of the physiotherapy workforce needed to deliver NHS policy commitments in England, This was to include...

Development and adoption of PHM
The challenge Suffolk and North East Essex (SNEE) Integrated Care System (ICS) sought a partner to support the development of, and to accelerate the adoption of, Population Health Management (PHM) across their localities.Our response NECS analysts initially...

Covid-19 response
In March 2020 at the early stages of the COVID-19 global pandemic, Durham County Council partnered with NECS to adopt a Population Health Management (PHM) approach to support the COVID-19 response.