Analytical support to the Getting It Right First Time programme

Background to GIRFT

The Getting it Right First Time (GIRFT) programme was made possible with funding from the Department of Health announced by the then Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Jeremy Hunt in November 2016. Building on the conclusions of the Lord Carter Review, GIRFT developed and established a methodology for evidencing unwarranted variation and disseminating this knowledge across the system through the use of data and peer-to-peer conversations to drive improvement and best practice.

GIRFT improvement approach

The improvement approach draws on data packs for Trusts which present key evidence using data from a wide variety of sources – including Hospital Episode Statistics (HES), relevant registry and professional body data, and questionnaires issued to all Trusts. Analysts partner with clinical leads to collect and analyse this evidence into specialty-level data reviews. Clinical leads, who are appointed with the support of their specialty bodies, then take the data to all Trusts and identify improvement opportunities in peer-to-peer conversations. The results are written up into a national report and findings disseminated nationwide. Particularly relevant metrics are published on the Model Health System platform and continuously refreshed for Trusts to see their position against other Trusts and monitor progress.

GIRFT Vision: To provide equality of access to high quality care across the whole of England.
GIRFT Mission: To identify and eliminate unwarranted variation in clinical standards and outcomes, and support the adoption of validated, efficient and cost effective best in class services across the whole of the NHS to support NHSEI in delivering the Long Term Plan.

The role of Edge

Edge has partnered with GIRFT since 2018 and as a trusted analytics partner has formed multidisciplinary teams at specialty level with several clinical leads to develop benchmarking reports that enable the unique improvement approach of GIRFT.

Key to the success of this work has been the ability by the Edge team to translate clinical experience into the language of analytics and bridge the highly technical vocabulary of HES data, clinical coding and SQL with the on-the-ground experience of non-technical clinicians.

In this way Edge have supported the development of Orthopaedics, Spinal, Neonatal Intensive Care, Paediatric Trauma, Gynaecology and Urology reviews across the NHS. Edge have also managed the process of identifying key metrics to add to the Model Health System and successfully supported GIRFT and NHSIE in developing content for a variety of specialties on MHS.

The benefits

GIRFT has established its methodology across 40 workstreams. An independent evaluation of GIRFT value identified £1.2bn-worth of efficiency gains achieved by early 2020. Edge directly contributed to this through delivery of c. 1,000 data packs across a variety of specialties that enabled senior clinician-to-clinician analysis and interpretation of hospital performance data.