The NHS England board meeting in February shared updates and outlooks on operational performance and productivity, the NHS Genomic Medicine Service, children and young people’s health, and vaccination and screening services.
On digital, the update noted the continued focus for digital to drive productivity, including improving processes, optimising system capacity, reducing low value activity, delivering more care in the community, harnessing improvements offered by the use of tech like teledermatology, expanding the use of the NHS app, and completing the rollout of planned EPR upgrades.
The board shared updates on the NHS Genomic Medicine Service, marking key achievements for 2024 including delivering “over 810,000 genomic tests for patients across the life course in England”, and the creation of a genomics data and digital vision covering interoperability and standardisation to promote data flow. The board noted that key trends in genomics will inform the future development of the service including the use of automation in laboratory services, the development of genomic testing with new advances and technologies, and the improvement of data and digital infrastructure to connect genomic and clinical data “in near real time”.
On children and young people, and vaccination and screening services, the board discussed the national Paediatric Early Warning System (PEWS) to help track deteriorating children and links with the implementation of Martha’s Rule; the development of a vaccination data record to support accurate data and nationally-consistent bookings; and the development of the NHS app to support vaccination services including booking.
The board noted a proposal for the vast majority of V&S services to be delegated to ICBs. Here, the proposal indicates from April 2026, ICBs will “have responsibility for a wider range of prevention services for their populations and greater levers to discharge their population health function”. The board then makes acknowledgment of “assurance, standard setting, co-ordinating and planning above ICB level, implementing new programmes and programme changes and incident management to support the requirement for national consistency in V&S programmes.”
The operational performance update highlighted the final month of “the busiest year on record” for A&E and ambulance services, and the total number of attendances reported as 27.42 million at A&E departments across England in 2024. For cancer services, the update cites an increase of 27 percent more referrals per working day in November 2024 compared with before the pandemic, which it states has “contributed to increases in early diagnosis, which are now about 2 percentage points higher than before the pandemic”.
For productivity levels across the health service, the board states there was an estimated 2.4 percent increase in acute productivity in the first seven months of 2024/25 compared with the same period in 2023/24. “At the same time inputs have also grown as the NHS invested in growing the workforce,” it states. “Overall this means the level of productivity is now estimated to be around 8% below the level it was in 2019/20. However, there has been positive productivity growth in each year since 2020/21, and acute productivity is averaging above 2% for the last 3 years (22/23, 23/24 and YTD 24/25).”
In non-acute productivity, NHSE points to data quality issues as preventing “more timely measurement of productivity in-year”, but states that initial outputs from this work “suggest non-acute productivity growth is slightly higher than the 2.4 percent acute growth for 2024/25”. Following successful testing, NHSE shares, “we will begin to release these estimates later this year, but they will likely require careful interpretation given the data quality issues and will likely need continued refinement throughout the year”. Tackling agency spending, boosting staff retention, and “continued investment” in digital transformation with progress around the NHS app and EPRs, are areas identified as having contributed to increased productivity.
For primary care the update shares that in the 12 months to the end of November 2024, there had been 378.4 million GP appointments, and in November 50 percent of appointments had taken place on the same day or the day after booking. For mental health, NHSE notes improvements in access to community mental health services, with 640,437 people receiving two or more contacts as of November 2024, “a 9 percent increase compared to 587,099 in November 2023”.
Improvements are also noted in cancer diagnosis, where performance against the 28 day faster diagnosis standard for November was recorded at 77.4 percent, above the NHS constitutional standard of 75 percent, and representing a 5.6 percent improvement compared to the same point in 2023. The board state that the NHS is “working hard” to keep up with increased demand, “accelerating the installation of new diagnostic capacity, much of it in Community Diagnostic Centres”.
To read the board papers, please click here.
NHS reform and operational improvements
Last month, we covered the publication of the plan for reforming NHS elective care, which set out a vision of future NHS care which is “increasingly personalised and digital”, focusing on improved experience, convenience, choice, and control. A HTN Now panel discussion looked at the role of digital in supporting NHS reform – modernising services, shifting from hospital to community, and supporting the move from reactive to proactive care. We welcomed Dawn Greaves, associate director of digital transformation at Leeds Community Healthcare; Ananya Datta, associate director of primary care digital delivery at South East London ICS; and Stuart Stocks, lead enterprise architect with Aire Logic.
NHS England’s 2025/26 priorities and operational planning guidance was also published, with a focus on local prioritisation and planning, reducing wait times, improving access and patient flow, and more. In a foreword by Amanda Pritchard, the chief executive highlighted improvements in services and productivity, but noted that in areas like elective care and mental health services, “despite record activity, continued high demand means improvements are not yet nearly enough to allow everyone to access services in a timely or convenient way”.
Don’t forget to browse our event schedule for 2025, covering a range of health tech topics across health and care settings, through a series of webcasts, webinars and panel discussions. Every session is completely free for NHS employees to attend and open for everyone to join.
