National Specification for psychological therapies and interventions - national implementation guide 3: psychology operational plan

4. Performance Management

Performance management is concerned with ensuring that resources are applied effectively and efficiently to achieve the desired outcomes for patients and for the service (including staff wellbeing and retention / recruitment). It is a complex area requiring a mix of analysis, experience, professional judgement and continuing enquiry, learning and adjustment. Given the nature of service delivery in Psychology, it requires consideration at overall Psychology Service, individual Service / Team, and individual practitioner levels. The areas that should be covered are:

• Leadership and Senior Management. A brief overview of the senior internal management team structure (Band 8B and above) and the support available in the areas of business management, finance and technology / analytics. Other areas to cover may include gaps in the structure and training requirements.
• Duration of Treatment. An analysis of historic data in relation to treatment appointments per patient addressing mean, median and range of appointments at discharge for the main Psychology services. A suggested format is shown at Appendix 3.
• Details of current average appointments planning assumptions in use for each service for the purposes of Capacity Modelling and Performance Management.
• Details of the approach to Job Planning for individual practitioners. A description of the job planning process and an example of the composition / format of individual job plans. Suggested components that may be included are descriptions of:
  • Current assumptions for the expected appointments for a full-time member of staff at Bands 7 and 8a (typically reduced at 8b and 8c due to management commitments) and use of adjustments for individual services / other relevant circumstances (e.g. mentoring of a trainee, specialist role, additional service / research commitments, wellbeing etc.).
  • Allocation of appointments / time across assessment, treatment and group and other activity.
  • Determination and management of practitioners’ expected caseload sizes and casemix.
• Capacity Modelling. Details of how average appointments and practitioner job plans are translated into capacity estimates at individual and team levels. Description of the process whereby these estimates are used for planning and performance management processes.
• Reporting. Details of the capability to report on activity in the following areas (anonymised, example report formats may be relevant) and the application of the information in planning and management processes:
  • Activity reporting (New Treatment Patients, Appointments Booked and Attended) at Team and Individual Practitioner levels set against capacity expectations;
  • DCAQ analysis on a monthly cycle for individual Services / Teams and projection of Waiting List Trajectories;
  • General factors such as Referral Acceptance rates, DNA / CNA rates, Outcomes of Assessments;
  • Caseload sizes;
  • Treatment Outcomes;
  • CAPTND Dataset.
• Details of IT system / analytics capacity where reporting is not available / limited and current initiatives and support to enhance capability.