Publisher's Synopsis
In 2020, after the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, NHS England asked NHS trusts and systems to take an inclusive approach to tackling waiting lists by disaggregating waiting times by ethnicity and deprivation to identify inequalities and to take action in response. Between December 2022 and June 2023, The King's Fund undertook qualitative case studies about the implementation of this policy in three NHS trusts and their main integrated care boards (ICBs), and interviewed a range of other people about using artificial intelligence (AI) to help prioritise care. We also reviewed literature, NHS board papers and national waiting times data. Our aim was to understand how the policy was being interpreted and implemented locally, and to extract learning from this.
