Tackling health inequalities on NHS waiting lists: learning from local case studies
- Collection:
- Health Policy and Services Research
- Author(s):
- Robertson, Ruth, author Blythe, Nicola, author Jefferies, Danielle, author
- Contributor(s):
- King's Fund (London, England), issuing body.
- Publication:
- London : The King's Fund, November 2023
- Language(s):
- English
- Format:
- Text
- Subject(s):
- Health Status Disparities Healthcare Disparities Single-Case Studies as Topic State Medicine Waiting Lists United Kingdom
- Genre(s):
- Technical Report
- Abstract:
- In the aftermath of the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, the NHS decided to think differently about its approach to managing waiting lists. The uneven impact of Covid-19, which took a higher toll on people from ethnic minorities and more deprived areas, raised awareness of underlying health inequalities and galvanised the government to ‘build back better’, so that the country would emerge from the pandemic as a more equal society. In the second half of 2020, as part of new plans to ‘recover services’ and start treating the backlog of people waiting for care, NHS England asked local NHS organisations to take an inclusive approach. This meant examining their waiting lists to identify inequalities relating to the level of deprivation and ethnicity, and prioritising service delivery taking this into account. By doing this they brought social demographic factors into the nationally defined approach to waiting list management--a process that was previously only explicit about clinical needs and maximum waiting time guarantees. However, the policy was broad, and left local areas to define their approach. This novel policy initiative put work to address health inequalities at the centre of one of the NHS’s core operational priorities. The King’s Fund has previously said that progress in tackling health inequalities hinges on the NHS making this work part of its business as usual, rather than an add-on. We were therefore keen to understand what happened when policy-makers tried to do exactly that. Three years on from the introduction of that policy, this report looks at how taking an inclusive approach to tackling the elective care backlog has been interpreted and implemented in three case study trusts and integrated care boards (ICBs). Our findings will be useful for staff working in operational and strategy roles connected to elective performance and health inequalities in trusts and integrated care systems (ICSs), as well as national and local policy-makers looking to develop future approaches.
- Copyright:
- Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder. Further use of the material is subject to CC BY license. (More information)
- Extent:
- 1 online resource (1 PDF file (i, 81 pages, 1 unnumbered page))
- Illustrations:
- Illustrations
- NLM Unique ID:
- 9918734080106676 (See catalog record)
- ISBN:
- 9781915303141
- Permanent Link:
- http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/9918734080106676