Vanguard evaluation: National Orthopeadic Alliance

Over the course of 2018 Edge Health evaluated the activity and impact of the National Orthopaedic Alliance (NOA). The outputs of this evaluation were used to inform future behaviours and establish strategy moving forward.

Throughout 2015 a total of 50 ‘vanguards’ were chosen by NHS England to lead on the development of new models of care to act as blueprints for the rest of the NHS to follow. One of these 50 was National Orthopaedic Alliance, which brought together 23 providers of specialist orthopaedic activity to ensure best-practice across the specialty and establish the precedent for single-specialty alliances.

Following discussions with the 23-strong membership of the NOA, Edge Health combined the insight with quantitative analysis of outcomes to assess the economic impact of the NOA.

The core of the evaluation was based on interviews with the current members. This was focussed on the value they saw from the NOA, and the impact it had had on their day-to-day operations. The Edge Health team then interpreted this data, along with available quantitative data on outcomes for NOA members, to feed back the conditions under which the NOA had a more or less positive impact and establish a strategic direction going forward.

The findings from the work were presented at an NOA Board meeting, whilst also being discussed in greater detail with the NOA leadership team. The findings were well-received, and were used to establish key organisational priorities moving forward. Separately, our work identified conclusions on the success of the single-specialty model as trialled by the NOA – these conclusions were fed back into the overall national programme.