The national neurology services dashboard – accessing and navigating the data

If you work in neurology or with people living with a neurological condition, the neurology transformation programme is the policy to know about. When you understand the current NHS priorities, you can see how they map onto your own service priorities, engage stakeholders, collaborate with others, and steer real, transformative change for your local area.

The lack of information about the organisation and quality of neurology services across England has been a real hindrance to anyone involved in trying to improve those services and develop new pathways of care. The neurology data dashboard displays a wealth of useful metrics in a user friendly format, that are updated regularly and benchmarked against all other areas of the country - it's an essential resource for anyone in a leadership, management or commissioning role

Martin Wilson, consultant neurologist, clinical adviser NHSE neurosciences transformation programme

In order to transform services for the better, we need to be able to understand what is going on with them now, and accurate data is an important part of that picture.

In this webinar Dr Martin Wilson will explain how this dashboard can support clinicians, providers and commissioners. He will demonstrate its key features, show recent updates, provide tips on navigating the data, and tell you how to get access now.

Summary

Neurology Dashboard Webinar

In this webinar Dr Martin Wilson highlighted that historically there has been no system planning for neurology. The lack of data about neurology service performance has been a significant issue for both commissioners and neurology services in the past leading to fragmented neurology services which is why the neurology data dashboard has been developed.

The Adult Neurology ICS dashboard is an online interactive dashboard that has been developed to support ICSs and neurology teams to understand their local neurology landscape and improve planning to deliver equity of access and quality services across their health population. The dashboard sets out key metrics and visualisations for neurology services in each ICS and provides commissioners with at a glance information including the scope and quality of their local neurology services using existing whole population and whole pathway data.

This dashboard will form an integral part of the NHS England neurology transformation strategy to support the integrated commissioning of neurology services from April 2024.

ICBs and neurology services can use the dashboard as a lever for whole population thinking for neurology services, aligned with ICB priorities to improve ICB outcomes in population health and health care and tackle inequalities in outcomes, experience and access. Using the neurology dashboard together with the financial guidance and networked governance guidance documents available on the NHS Futures Collaboration website will support the commissioning and delivery of optimal neurology services through the new three tier neurology model.

NHSE will continue to develop the dashboard focussing on highlighting inequalities in access, experience and outcome and this will be supported by a dashboard user group

Launched in April 2023 the dashboard is refreshed to add new data quarterly approximately 6-8 weeks after each quarter end. For example, data for April 2024 to June 2024 will bereleased at the end of August 2024.

Dashboard content

The dashboard includes a range of metrics which span the whole neurology pathway covering areas such as

• non-elective admissions
• length of stay
• specialist advice
• prescriptions
• inpatient and outpatient waits for treatment
• neurologists and providers
• admission and appointment numbers by provider and condition group
• patient flows in and out of ICS areas for inpatients and outpatients

Metric data is shown quarterly from Q1 2019/20 for all neurology patients together and for patients with a diagnosis in one of the following four condition groups separately.

• Epilepsy
• Headache
• Multiple Sclerosis
• Parkinson’s disease

Martin demonstrated the dashboard and how it can be used and urged delegates to request a log access to enable the webinar attendees to look at their own local performance. There is a 5 step process for access:

Step 1 – Set up an OKTA account

OKTA allows you to sign in to all the NHS England applications your organization uses through a single login. You need to have an OKTA account to sign in to the NCDR Portal.

Check if you have account and reset your password if required:

NHS England - Sign In (okta-emea.com)

Register for an account if you don’t already have one:

Register | NHS England applications (model.nhs.uk)

Step 2 – NCDR Portal sign in

The NCDR Portal is a platform that holds the Adult Neurology ICB Dashboard. Once you have an OKTA username and password, you can sign in to the NCDR Portal and create a profile:

https://ncdr.england.nhs.uk/report/view/242

Step 3 – NCDR Portal create a profile

When you sign in for the first time you will be asked to confirm your details which creates your profile.

Fill in your name and contact details

To complete your organisation’s details, select the relevant Organisation Type from the drop down. Then type your organisation’s name, click the magnifying glass and select your organisation from the drop down. You can also type and search for the Organisation Code instead of the Organisation Name.

In the Roles section tick Report Viewer. Also tick Approver if you have direct reports who you need to approve.

When completing the ‘Groups’ section you must select at least one of the following groups to be able to access the Adult Neurology ICB Dashboard

Specialised Services General​ICB Reporting General
Providers General​​​Any of the Region General groups

If there are issues with your line manager authorising your application a member of the Neurosciences Service Transformation Programme team can assist but email this person to let them know and provide the reason why you are requesting access. To contact the NHSE team and request an approver, email england.neurosciences.improvement@nhs.net

Step 4 – Approval

Once you have completed your profile you need to wait to be approved by the person you put down as Line Manager/Authoriser.

Step 5 – Viewing reports

When you have been approved you will see a Reports tab.

Click the Reports tab, then search for the Adult Neurology ICB Dashboard.

Click the Actions button on the report tile then you can either:

View the report – you’ll see the interactive Adult Neurology ICB Dashboard

Add To Pot – this option will ask you to Assign To Pot, the report will now show up on your Home page in future.

Martin finished his talk by urging webinar members to sign up for dashboard use via theFuture NHS Collaboration platform https://future.nhs.uk/connect.ti/home/grouphome

He also highlighted that this platform has a neurology workspace where information about the neurology transformation strategy is held along with a toolkit to help clinicians and ICB’s focus on the neurology agenda https://future.nhs.uk/neurologyservicetransformation

Those interested in joining the workspace can request a log in from the workspace manager.