Briefing / EVO Case studies North Staffordshire Combined Healthcare NHS Trust

The HFMA’s Healthcare Costing for Value Institute and Future-Focused Finance have worked together to develop the Engagement Value Outcome (EVO) framework. EVO promotes collaborative working between clinical and finance teams and their collective understanding of  patient-level costing (PLICS), providing the NHS with a framework to ensure resources are used in the most effective way possible to provide high-quality care to patients. 

During the second half of 2019 the EVO framework was piloted with four trusts, covering acute, mental health and community services.

This report describes the experience of those involved in the EVO pilot at North Staffordshire Combined Healthcare NHS Trust, who chose to look at three areas of mental health services: adult community mental health teams, crisis care and memory assessment services.

Although the costing team has started rolling out the use of PLICS, this has not yet been done trust wide. The Trust felt that the EVO Framework would be a good way to encourage trust-wide interest in PLICS.

At the end of EVO, the three EVO teams presented their findings to a wider trust group, who were enthusiastic about the approach. As one person said ‘This needs to become business as usual – for every service and every team.’

The active engagement of clinical, operational  and costing staff in the EVO sessions meant that the sessions were very pro-active.  Not only did clinical services gain a better understanding of how PLICS could support them with service improvement, their enthusiasm for using the data to identify opportunities to improve services meant that service changes were already starting to be implemented during the period that EVO took place.

The case studies in this report provide a flavour of some of the conversations the multi-disciplinary teams had within their EVO sessions as they explored their PLICS data.