Evidence based interventions

Posted on: 17 October 2018

One of the Partnership’s key areas of work in its Improving Planned Care programme is to review the procedures currently being carried out in West Yorkshire and Harrogate that are of limited clinical value. Research evidence shows that some procedures are not clinically effective and, as medical science advances, some of them can now be replaced by treatments that are less invasive or more effective.

The NHS believes that more needs to be done to make sure that the least effective procedures are not routinely performed, or only performed in specific circumstances. In the first phase of its review, the NHS plans to stop routinely carrying out 17 medical procedures that have been identified as being of limited value. To gather the views of the public on this, NHS England carried out a public consultation which ran from 4 July to 28 September 2018. 

The Partnership studied NHS England’s consultation document around Evidence Based Interventions and issued a response to this in October, in which it:

  • agrees that the 17 medical procedures identified are the right ones;
  • believes this should be an ongoing programme and other procedures of limited clinical value should be reviewed, stressing the importance of informing and involving the public throughout the process; and
  • noted that there may be a small number of instances where carrying out one of the 17 procedures identified could be of clinical value so have opposed introducing a total ‘blanket ban’ for the area. The partnership agrees that the individual funding request (IFR) process should be followed if a clinical need for four of the 17 procedures is identified, but has stressed that any process for the remaining procedures must not add significant administrative work.

You'll find more information about NHS England’s Evidence Based Interventions consultation on the NHS website here, including the Consultation Response Document, Statutory Guidance, Activity Figures, the Equalities Impact Assessment and some FAQs.

The Partnership’s full response to the consultation can be viewed here.

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