Improving the capabilities of NHS organisations to use evidence: A Process Model
Introduction
NHS commissioning organisations (CCGs) are under huge pressures to ensure high quality of healthcare services and to achieve better value with regard to the deployment of healthcare resources. An important associated challenge is to delineate how CCGs might develop and improve their organisational capabilities for redesigning and recommissioning healthcare services. It is also notable that multiple evidence-based products and authoritative recommendations for
improvements in service delivery (e.g. NICE guidelines) are increasingly being supplied to NHS commissioning bodies to assist them in making complex redesign and recommisioning decisions.
What is the purpose of our study?
The study aims at specifying how the process of service redesign in NHS commissioning organisations (CCGs) might be improved with a focus on NICE guidelines use. Our approach will be to investigate comprehensively redesign projects focusing on the same area of care across 8 CCGs.
What are the research methods?
To achieve our objectives, we will use well-known qualitative methods (observations, semi-structured interviews) to study redesign projects and the journeys of NICE guidelines within these decision-making processes. By adopting a comparative research strategy, we will attempt to explain holistically how variations in processes of service redesign and of mobilising authoritative evidence occur and under what organisational conditions.
What do we hope to achieve?
The chief objective of this project is to provide resources for benchmarking and self-assessment of organisational capabilities to accomplish service redesign and use NICE guidelines within such processes. The planned output of this project is a set of practical improvement methods – a process roadmap and associated diagnostic/ benchmarking tool, which will enable CCGs to identify opportunities for improvement.
Who is organising the research?
This independent research is conducted by a multi-disciplinary team from Warwick University, NICE and the NHS. Funds are provided by the National Institute for Health Research through the Health Service and Delivery Research programme.
The project webpage can be found here.
A copy of this information is available to download as a flyer here 
Research dissemination event
A workshop was held at the University of Warwick in May 2016 to report on the results from this study and further information can be found here
