Transformation Partners in Health and Care > News > Demand and Capacity Modelling for Diagnostics

A system wide demand and capacity modelling assignment for diagnostics was commissioned by the Southwest London Integrated Care System (ICS) and the Transforming Cancer Services Team for London and Elective Care Improvement Support Team (IST) were responsible for supporting the modelling and producing provider level and system outputs.

A case study from Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust Imaging service has been published to share the benefits of this piece of work.

The Epsom and St Helier case study was undertaken as part of a system wide demand and capacity modelling project for imaging services in Southwest London Integrated Care System (ICS). The work was undertaken as a larger modelling project also involving endoscopy and echocardiography.

Epsom and St Helier wanted to achieve a clear understanding of their current demand and capacity position for the imaging service, including the measurement of growth for forecasting capacity needed in the future.

The modelling outputs from Epsom and St Helier fed into a larger piece of demand and capacity work for imaging along with all trusts in the Southwest sector resulting in an understanding of the capacity position at system level and potential to inform the implementation mutual aid of community diagnostics centres to increase activity in the region. This view of imaging across the sector had not been modelled previously, therefore the outputs were extremely valuable for planning purposes for the ICS.

Working closely with the Elective Care Improvement Support Team (IST) and Transforming Cancer Services Team (TCST), Epsom and St Helier embarked upon a detailed review of their demand and capacity position, which included data extraction of all requests for imaging modalities. The teams went through a comprehensive process of scrutinising the demand data to ensure it was representative of the clinical service; the capacity data, transcribing the weekly schedule into a format which summarised every session which occurred within the imaging department, and the parameters, the Did Not Attend (DNA) and cancellation rates as well.

The team at Epsom and St Helier described how the modelling resulted in a significant impact in the way they considered service planning. Having a demand ‘baseline’ (weekly average number of requests) as part of the modelling exercise meant it was a relatively straightforward measure to understand when they were having weeks of high demand, and they could flex their capacity accordingly. This helped to ensure a smoother throughput, and a more consistent patient wait time.

Reflecting on the exercise, the imaging team at Epsom commented that the support of the IST/ TCST as subject matter experts was key, and really helped in ensuring the exercise went smoothly, was completed within the timeframe and the outputs were accurate and meaningful.

Watch the video case study.

The full case study can be found on the Elective Care IST Futures hub here.