The Health Foundation to support five research projects that explore how behavioural insights can be used to increase efficiency and reduce waste in health care

Five research projects have been selected as part of the Health Foundation’s £1.5 million open call for novel research ideas that design, test and evaluate behaviourally informed interventions that have the potential to significantly improve efficiency and reduce waste in health care services in the UK.

The overarching programme aims are to:

• understand the motivation to act efficiently
• design appropriate new behavioural interventions
• examine how interventions work and for whom
• provide lessons on spread in a UK health care services context.

These five projects will allow behavioural scientists to work alongside frontline staff, helping them to apply and test the insights and methods of behavioural science in rigorous experiments that seek to improve efficiency and reduce waste in ways that can better serve the general population.

The programme runs for 2 years and final findings are due in 2018. Emerging findings from each project will also be shared as the research progresses.

The projects are:

• Does feedback on cost or radiation dose for common diagnostic tests modify demand in a busy district general hospital? - University of Nottingham

This research project examines whether providing feedback to clinicians about the cost of commonly used blood tests and CT scans is an effective way to reduce unnecessary demand for diagnostic tests. The research will also explore whether providing information about radiation exposure from CT scans and the associated increase in cancer risk encourages clinicians to use safer alternatives.
 

• BLUEPRINTS: Does targeted parental education reduce non-urgent paediatric emergency department and urgent care centre reattendance? - The Behavioural Insights Team, in partnership with Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and London North West Healthcare NHS Trust

This project involves developing and testing a new discharge process for children presenting to A&E with fever, with the aim of reducing unnecessary re-attendances. The intervention will use behavioural insights to support parents by giving them the knowledge and confidence to manage childhood fever at home.
 

• Environmental engineering to increase hand hygiene compliance - Warwick Business School in partnership with Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust.

This project will examine how simple changes in the hand washing areas of hospital wards can subconsciously influence people to follow good hand hygiene practice. The study will test the effect that two triggers – a smell and an image – have on hand washing compliance on four hospital wards.
 

• OpenPrescribing: using GP prescriptions data to reduce wasteful prescribing - Centre for Evidence Based Medicine, University of Oxford

The project team is drawing on behavioural insights to design a range of approaches for encouraging GPs and practice managers to engage with the prescriptions data available on the OpenPrescribing website. They will test methods including peer comparison tools, cost savings calculators, feedback on prescribing behaviour and email alerts, to establish which have the greatest impact on prescribing behaviour.
 

• Improving efficiency by building behavioural insights into an innovative NHS procurement portal - The Behavioural Insights Team in partnership with The Policy Institute at King’s College London, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, and Virtual Stock.

This project will explore how behavioural insights can be applied to an online procurement system, to generate cost savings without compromising quality. The project team will test how messages and prompts can be used throughout the buying process to encourage efficient and effective purchasing decisions.