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QI Case Study: Unlocking insights
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What is a QI Case Study?
Case Studies invite you to explore invaluable insights through a collection of compelling improvement projects from across the Trust. Read below for a deep dive into how Cambridgeshire Community Services developed a new tool for capacity and demand analysis to improve trust-wide services.
Improvement Name: Unlocking Insights - Building a tool for understanding demand and capacity
Date: October 2023
Deep Dive: Understanding the Problem
Effective operational management relies on demand and capacity analysis, allowing us to use resources wisely, provide excellent care, make informed decisions and promote ongoing improvement. This is our story of how we created a tool to support this.
The challenge:
Historically demand and capacity analysis was largely undertaken on bespoke Excel spreadsheets with a variety of methodologies in use. Resulting in inconsistent approaches and difficulty in maintenance. National tools are typically designed for acute settings and commercial tools are expensive and often not well suited to the variety of pathways present in a community setting.
Initially, we reviewed different approaches and tools used across the trust and gathered requirements from key stakeholders.
Next, we began outlining the most effective approach for representing different pathways and how to organise the required data. Once happy we designed a user interface and figured out a centralised hosting solution.
The initial prototype was tested exclusively with the Improvement and Transformation team. After receiving feedback and making necessary refinements, we conducted a pilot with services eager to engage in analysis.
Design: Designing the Change
Our demand and capacity tool was built using the 'open source' coding language 'R' which enables us to have greater flexibility in updating and adding new features.
There were 4 key areas in the tool, demand data capture, capacity data information which enables the user to split by roles, teams etc and the analysis section which provides analysis of the data provided.
An advanced functionality option has been added to support a more detailed analysis.
Deliver:
Used to support demand and capacity analysis for 15 different services.- Has replaced an expensive commercial tool used by the 0-19 Healthy Child Programme services across the trust, saving approx. £10k a year.
- Has been instrumental in supporting bids for new service contracts.
Evolve: Continuous Improvement
Further developments of this tool have been running quarterly and new features are constantly in the pipeline. Users can 'request' changes via the tool which are then reviewed and added to the development backlog in priority order.
At present, the tool is available on the central data science platform, with access facilitated by the Improvement and Transformation team. This setup will continue until the launch of a comprehensive demand and capacity masterclass. This masterclass emphasises that the demand and capacity tool serves as a support for analysis, while also providing a more extensive understanding of demand and capacity.
You can find more information about the new tool to analyse demand and capacity developed by Cambridgeshire Community Services in the QI snapshot below.
Download the full Case Study here
If you'd like to dive into more examples of projects, head to our Case Studies page for inspiration.
Last reviewed:
1 March, 2025