SWL ICB Population Health Benchmarking

The Data will be used for the purpose of commissioning and risk stratification.

The Data will be used for population health analysis to understand patient demographics and activity counts per patient for patients accessing NHS hospital services across England. Control and participant groups will be defined by demographic or clinical stratifications within the HES data to identify inequalities.

The analysis will be used by NHS South West London Integrated Care Board for strategic commissioning purposes. It is important for NHS South West London Integrated Care Board to be able to benchmark themselves against other areas in the country to understand the areas of highest concern. NHS South West London Integrated Care Board are unable to do this in detail without having access to more detailed HES data.

The analysis looks to identify inequalities in the following areas:

• Inpatient length of stays

• RTT waiting times

• A&E admissions

• DNA and cancellation rates

• Readmission rates

• Avoidable admissions

• Evidence-Based Interventions

• Discharge delays – including discharges to Care Homes

• In-hours vs Out-of-hours activity

No data will flow to NHS England for the purposes of this Data Sharing Agreement (DSA).

NHS England will provide the relevant records from the HES and ECDS datasets to SWL ICB. The Data will contain no direct identifying data items. The Data will be pseudonymised and individuals cannot be reidentified through linkage with other data in the possession of the recipient.

The Data will be transferred to a data warehouse owned by North East London ICB (NEL ICB).

The Data will not be transferred to any other location.

The Data will be stored on servers at NEL ICB.

The Data will be accessed by authorised personnel via remote access.

The Controller(s) must confirm and provide evidence upon audit by NHS England that access via any remote device complies with the data security obligations within this DSA and the Data Sharing Framework Contract.

For remote access:

- Remote access will only be from secure locations situated within the territory of use (as further restricted elsewhere within the DSA if so done) stated within this DSA;

- Access controls granting users the minimum level of access required are in place;

- Remote access is only via secure connections (e.g., VPNs or secure protocols) to protect data;

- Multifactor authentication (MFA) is required for remote access;

- Device security, including up-to-date software and operating systems, antivirus software, and enabled firewalls are utilised for the remote access;

- All remote access is undertaken within the scope of the organisation’s DSPT (or other security arrangements as per this DSA) and complies with the organisation’s remote access policy.

The above applies in addition to any condition set out elsewhere within the DSA (e.g. who may carry out processing, and for what purpose).

The Data will be linked using GP / provider practice code with quality metrics such as patient satisfaction scores to assess the relationships between patient activity and quality of care.

The expected outputs of the processing will be:

- Reports (produced annually) for NHS South West London ICB leadership and system partners, focusing on variation and inequalities in care (e.g. inpatient length of stay, A&E admissions, readmissions, RTT waiting times).

- Dashboards developed for internal use within the ICB, providing aggregated, non-disclosive population health metrics. These will not expose record-level data and will be restricted to aggregated outputs. Development of population health dashboards will support decision-making across partner organisations.

- Briefing documents and slide packs for ICS Boards, Place-based Partnerships, and system leadership groups to support commissioning decisions.

- Creation of an evaluation framework for monitoring inequalities and patient outcomes

The outputs will not contain NHS England Data and will only contain aggregated information with small numbers suppressed as appropriate in line with the relevant disclosure rules for the dataset(s) from which the information was derived.

The outputs will be communicated to relevant recipients through the following dissemination channels:

- Regular quarterly reporting and internal dashboards will be shared with system stakeholders (ICB executives, ICS boards, Place-based leadership teams) throughout the project to inform commissioning and service redesign.

- Website publications

- Newsletters to local stakeholders

- Workshops/webinars with partner organisations

- Targeted briefings to NHS England

- Contributions to national learning events.

- Annual public reports and presentations will be published to ensure transparency and public accountability.

- An evaluation framework for monitoring inequalities and patient outcomes may be shared across NHS ICSs to promote system learning.

- Findings will also be shared continuously with ICB and ICS partners through board briefings, workshops, and bilateral engagement.

Data processing is expected to deliver the following public benefits:

- Improved evidence for decision-making

Findings will contribute to evidence-based commissioning and planning by NHS South West London ICB and its Integrated Care System (ICS). The analysis will provide a clearer understanding of local health and care needs, variation in access, and inequalities in outcomes. This will enable policymakers, clinicians, and system leaders to make informed decisions that directly improve patient care and experience.

- Understanding health needs and inequalities

The research will advance understanding of regional and national trends in hospital activity, including inpatient stays, A&E attendances, waiting times, and readmissions. By stratifying results across demographics, we will identify where inequalities exist (e.g. in access to elective care or avoidable admissions) and highlight where interventions are required.

- Service improvement and preventative care

Insights will inform the design of interventions that improve patient flow, reduce delays, and target avoidable admissions. The work will also highlight areas for preventative action (e.g. conditions leading to avoidable A&E use), supporting proactive and preventative models of care.

- Equity and allocation of resources

Outputs will be used to inform more equitable allocation of resources, ensuring that funding and service design are targeted at populations with the greatest health inequalities. This will help improve equity of access, experience, and outcomes across South West London and allow benchmarking against other areas nationally.

- Quality of care and best practice

Analysis will provide a mechanism to monitor variation in care quality (e.g. DNA rates, length of stay, discharge delays). This will allow the ICB to identify areas of best practice for wider adoption, and areas of poorer performance where remedial action is needed, thereby improving overall standards of care.

- Knowledge creation

The project will support system-wide learning by generating evidence that may be shared with ICS partners, NHS England, and wider health policy stakeholders.

By identifying inequalities, NHS South West London Integrated Care Board aims to reduce inequalities, improve patient safety and experience, improve the design and targeting of health services, and strengthen the evidence base available to decision-makers across health and social care.

Efforts will be made to raise awareness among local charities, Healthwatch, and voluntary/community organisations to ensure findings are acted on beyond the ICB.

The use of the data could:

- help the system to better understand the health and care needs of populations.

- lead to the identification or improvement of treatments or interventions, or health and care system design to improve health and care outcomes or experience.

- advance understanding of regional and national trends in health and social care needs.

- inform planning health services and programmes, for example to improve equity of access, experience and outcomes.

- inform decisions on how to effectively allocate and evaluate funding according to health needs.

- provide a mechanism for checking the quality of care. This could include identifying areas of good practice to learn from, or areas of poorer practice which need to be addressed.

Yielded Benefits is not a requirement for new applications.