National Demand Optimisation Group (NDOG): demand optimisation in laboratory medicine - phase IV report

Annex C: National Demand Optimisation Group Phase IV PID (May 2020)

1. Background

Scottish Government have funded three phases of national demand optimisation. The first explored ongoing work in NHS Scotland and published a report which proposed a national approach to the work. The second phase began to develop an atlas of variation and launched a number of QI projects. The third further developed the atlas to the point where it is in pilot with primary care colleagues.

The longer term vision is an automated Atlas, fed from the National Laboratories Information and Intelligence Platform, and a range of QI initiatives tackling over and under requesting. Significant further work is required to enable this. Meantime, there is benefit in continuing to develop the atlas and work with stakeholders to tackle variation.

2. Aims

The aims of Phase IV include:-

• Learning from the pilot phases of the Atlas
• Further roll out to primary care
• Ongoing quarterly data collection
• Development of educational toolkit
• Work with Local Improvement Support Teams (LIST) to develop plans for tackling variation
• Work with National Managed Diagnostic Networks (NMDNs) and labs to develop flash reports
• Exploration of embedding Primary Care QI portal into existing HIS platform
• Engagement with relevant stakeholders to promote and refine the programme