NHS England and NHS Improvement Pathway analyser tool: user guide April 2019
NHS England and NHS Improvement
Pathway analyser tool: user guide April 2019
1 | Contents
Contents
Introduction .................................................................................... 2
Data tab ......................................................................................... 3
Setting dependencies .................................................................... 6
Analysis-summary tabs ................................................................ 14
Reviewing the outputs .................................................................. 20
2 | Pathway analyser tool: user guide
Introduction
The Elective Care Intensive Support team (IST) have developed a pathway analyser tool to
identify the main reasons for delays in referral to treatment (RTT) and help operational teams
to focus on interventions that will have the biggest impact on reducing waiting times.
• The tool can be used for any pathway and is not restricted to cancer or RTT.
• This user guide is primarily for those new to the tool.
• The tool requires Excel 2007 as a minimum.
• Our tools are available via the elective care improvement hub.
The tool supports teams to define pathway milestones and helps to identify opportunities for
improvement. It can expose pathway stages that may not be visible to the trust or routinely
monitored. By setting out the milestones in the analyser it is possible to isolate steps that
would benefit from demand and capacity modelling, data collection and performance
monitoring.
The pathway analyser tool can provide a platform for discussing the design of a pathway and
variation in steps between trusts. The analysis improves the understanding of what happens
to patients following the pathway, reducing the dependency on anecdotal evidence.
Recommended approach
We recommend that the operational managers and clinical teams work together to identify
and agree the milestones and corresponding timeframes. Once milestones have been
completed the business information team should extract the milestone data from the patient
administration system/local system for the operational teams to review. Where data is
unavailable it is worth considering how significant the milestone is and if it is worth investing
time and resources to manually extract the information. Solutions for capturing, recording
and reporting milestone data should be identified once the analyser has been completed.
10 | Pathway analyser tool: user guide
First Appointment
(7)
Radiology
diagnostic request
date (7)
Radiology
diagnostic test (21)
Radiology
diagnostic report
available (28)
Radiology
diagnostic request
date (7)
Radiology
diagnostic test
(21)
Radiology
diagnostic report
available (28)
Staging
investigation
request (35)
First Appointment
(7)
Radiology
diagnostic request
date (7)
Radiology
diagnostic test (21)
Radiology
diagnostic report
available (28)
First Appointment
(7)
Radiology
diagnostic request
date (7)
Radiology
diagnostic test (21)
Radiology
diagnostic report
available (28)
First Appointment
(7)
Radiology
diagnostic request
date (7)
Radiology
diagnostic test (21)
Radiology
diagnostic report
available (28)
First Appointment
(7)
Radiology
diagnostic request
date (7)
Radiology
diagnostic test (21)
Endoscopy
diagnostic test (21)
~ Cells/milestones hidden
~
13 | Pathway analyser tool: user guide
Users should be careful when resetting dependencies, particularly complex ones, as it can
be difficult or impossible to undo the change once it has been made. It is worth saving
multiple versions before amending the dependency tab.
Returned from
triage (3)
First Appointment
(7)
Endoscopy
diagnostic request
date (7)
Endoscopy
diagnostic test (21)
Endoscopy
diagnostic report
available (28)
Pathway Milestone
Clock
Start
Date
First Appointment
(7)
Endoscopy
diagnostic request
date (7)
Endoscopy
diagnostic test
(21)
Endoscopy
diagnostic report
available (28)
Radiology
diagnostic request
date (7)
Pathway 1
Returned from
triage (3)
First Appointment
(7)
Endoscopy
diagnostic request
date (7)
Endoscopy
diagnostic test (21)
Endoscopy
diagnostic report
available (28)
Pathway 2
Returned from
triage (3)
First Appointment
(7)
Endoscopy
diagnostic request
date (7)
Endoscopy
diagnostic test (21)
Endoscopy
diagnostic report
available (28)
Pathway 3
Returned from
triage (3)
First Appointment
(7)
Endoscopy
diagnostic request
date (7)
Endoscopy
diagnostic test (21)
Endoscopy
diagnostic report
available (28)
Pathway 4
Returned from
triage (3)
First Appointment
(7)
Endoscopy
diagnostic request
date (7)
Endoscopy
diagnostic test (21)
Endoscopy
diagnostic report
available (28)
Dependency
19 | Pathway analyser tool: user guide
negative values (where the next milestone date is in the past when compared to the previous
one) which require a different dependency.