NCIP for clinical leaders

As well as enabling consultants to review their own activity data, National Consultant Information Programme (NCIP) data can be used to support clinical leadership responsibilities for:

medical directors and their delegates;

responsible officers;

specialty clinical leads.

NCIP presents a single point of access to locally and nationally benchmarked consultant-level data across a number of specialties, helping clinical leaders to oversee the consultants they are responsible for.  It supports clinical leadership, clinical governance and seeks to promote a culture of reflective practice amongst consultants in their trust.

Guide to embedding NCIP into processes to support clinical practice

Read our practical guide to implementing NCIP and embedding it into routine governance and appraisal processes

Containing practical steps, case studies and resources, it explains the key roles involved, their access levels and responsibilities, and how you can implement NCIP across your trust. The guide may be used as an onboarding manual, implementation roadmap and a reference document to support governance and quality improvement.

Supporting specialty clinical leads

Leadership

Oversight: stay informed of your unit’s surgical practice by viewing unit and individual consultant metrics. To provide insight, all metrics are benchmarked locally and nationally.

Clinical governance: review your unit’s NCIP dashboards in your M&M and audit meetings. You can drill down into patient diagnoses and procedures, giving you a detailed view of each episode of care. Filters by diagnosis, procedure or surgical approach give further insight.

Training and professional development: reflect on surgical practice at an individual and unit level to identify and agree training opportunities for the team. Check progress each quarter, when new data is added.

Research and innovation: use to track surgical innovation and as an objective source of data for research.

Strategy and operational management

Inform clinical service delivery plans: Use NCIP to monitor delivery plans against best practice and quality guidelines; review activity levels vs staff resourcing and distribution, as evidence in business cases; understand your local demographics and how this impacts your population’s experiences of care.

Pathway management: Monitor progress against your HVLC plans using HVLC specific dashboards. You can view specific points along the surgical pathway, such as length of stay or day case volumes, to support pathway improvement or re-design.

Clinical governance: View peri-operative complications: informing MDTs, audits or responses to complaints and helping understand procedural effectiveness. You can drill down into patient diagnoses and procedures, giving you a detailed view of each episode of care. Filters by diagnosis, procedure or surgical approach give further insight.

Supporting medical directors

Medical directors can see data for all consultants in their trust for included specialties.

Delegate access: medical directors can delegate medical director-level access to nominated employees at their trust to support their statutory duties.

Strategic oversight and management

Appraisal and re-validation: NCIP provides easy to use, objective evidence of clinical practice and meets the General Medical Council’s requirement for an objective data source for appraisal and re-validation.

Leadership and oversight: NCIP can be embedded at all levels of leadership, with enhanced access also available to responsible officers and specialty clinical leads.

Clinical governance: Use NCIP to identify unwarranted variation, supporting quality and safety.

Pathway management: Monitor progress against your HVLC plans using HVLC specific dashboards. You can view specific points along the surgical pathway, such as length of stay or day case volumes, to support pathway improvement or re-design.

Data quality: NCIP can be a driver for high quality clinical coding and data quality.

Supporting responsible officers

Responsible officers can see data for all consultants under their designation, in included specialties.

Leadership and oversight

Identify unwarranted variation in outcomes data on procedures delivered by individual consultants or at unit level.

Identify learning and development needs for consultants under your designation.

Inform final recommendations for a consultant’s revalidation.

Support high standards in the appraisal process for consultants.

Strengthen clinical governance.

Return to ‘About NCIP’ >

First time users: can email the team at: england.ncip@nhs.net

Existing users:

https://ncip.model.nhs.uk

Embedding NCIP:

Embedding NCIP – an implementation guide for medical directors and senior clinical leadership >

Helpful guides for clinical leaders:

Promoting NCIP to colleagues:

You can contact the NCIP team at: england.ncip@nhs.net

For help getting started

To request a demo

With feedback to help

"NCIP gives consultants and clinical leaders rich insights into their clinical outcomes, underpinning safety and effectiveness. I hope all trust Medical Directors and their colleagues will use the invaluable practical resources in this implementation guide to help embed NCIP in their trusts."

Penny Dash

Chair, NHS England

“We would be mad not to use NCIP… If you take an interest in results, you are more likely to have an interest in improving them.”

Jeremy Nettleton

Consultant Urologist and Clinical Lead, Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

“NCIP is a valuable tool for leaders in that it provides highly relevant data to help show their consultant teams how they are performing in comparison to expected practice over a wide breadth of procedure related metrics. This information is invaluable in driving professional curiosity, desire to improve or to share good practice. What impresses me is its applicability to all layers of medical leadership – from service lead to medical director. If you’ve never tried it, then get the login and have an explore. Perhaps try out the data at your next team meeting and see what happens!”

Professor Edward Morris CBE FRCOG

Regional Medical Director & Chief Clinical Information Officer, NHS England – East of England Region