Following the Covid-19 pandemic, the NHS faced a significant waiting list backlog due to the postponement and cancellation of elective procedures reflecting long-standing healthcare system capacity challenges.
Clearing this backlog was proving difficult due to existing, and pandemic-exacerbated challenges, such as resource constraints, workforce shortages, inconsistent data quality, and capacity limitations. The backlog prolonged patient waiting times, driving poorer patient experience, increased suffering, and potentially irreparable patient harm.
Many NHS Trusts struggled to understand the true state their backlog, due to challenges with legacy technology infrastructure and disparate unconnected data systems making it harder to establish the waiting list position. Without a trusted single view for waiting patients and theatre sessions, Trusts would struggle to effectively prioritise patients and optimise limited operating theatre capacity.
To respond to this challenge NHS England commissioned Palantir to establish the Improving Elective Care Coordination Pilot (IECCP). The IECCP programme created the innovative digital Care Coordination Solution (CCS), built on Palantir’s leading Foundry data software platform. CCS was designed to help Trusts reduce their elective waitlist by giving users intuitive access to all key data in one place. This enabled collaboration across all teams working on the elective pathway, by improving data quality and helping staff to maximise theatre utilisation with improved data driven scheduling.
The NHS and Palantir required support in driving maximum adoption of the CCS solution to ensure it delivered it’s promised benefits. KPMG partnered with Palantir to address this challenge for six NHS Trusts (Bath, Salisbury, North Midlands, Lincoln, West Herts and NorthTees).
KPMG were appointed to: