Intelligent Board

“One of the best bits of work on this sort of topic that I've seen in a long time” - Peter Dixon, ex-Chairman, University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

The Intelligent Board series gives practical, focused advice for NHS trust board members on the kind of information they should be using to understand and oversee their organisations’ performance.

All the reports are based on these Intelligent Board principles:

  • All information should cover locally defined priorities as well as national ‘must do’ requirements
  • All information should focus on outcomes, not systems and processes
  • All information should be available in a timely and understandable format
  • All information should be clearly and simply presented
  • All information should be forward-looking, presenting trends and anticipating future issues
  • All information should allow internal comparison between services and make use of external benchmarks
  • All information should provide interpretation and analysis as well as information
  • All information should provide a level of detail that is appropriate to the board’s governance role

Each report focuses on a key area:

Clinical Commissioning (2011) focuses on clinical commissioning and the intelligent use of information in practice to board members of clinical commissioning groups.

Patient Experience (2010) focuses on what boards can do to ensure they acquire a rounded understanding of how patients – and their families or carers – experience care or treatment. In this way, it aims to help boards fulfill their responsibility to hold their organisations to account for improving the quality and responsiveness of services, and to demonstrate this accountability to their local communities.

Commissioning to Reduce Inequalities (2009) plots a path through an area that is fraught with complexity and information overload to arrive at some simple, practical advice to help commissioning boards meet the challenge of reducing inequalities.

The Intelligent Practice (2007) is a guide to the information needed by GPs with commissioning responsibilities under Practice Based Commissioning.

The Intelligent Mental Health Board (2007) provides guidance on how the intelligent use of information can increase Board effectiveness in the vital role of providing strategic direction to trusts in a complex, multi-agency environment.

The Intelligent Ambulance Board (2006) shows how the Intelligent Board principles can be adapted to ambulance trusts.

The Intelligent Commissioning Board (2006) sets out some key principles for board-level information and GP commissioning; presents a framework for structuring the information requirements of SHA and PCT boards; and proposes, at a more detailed level, the sorts of indicators and information that might populate that framework.

The Intelligent Board (2006) – the very first report in the series – presents a set of principles and model framework for structuring information to support strategy development and oversight of business delivery and effectiveness. It also suggests practical ways in which boards might use the proposed framework.