Knowing the Nutrition and Dietetic Service
It is important to be able to clearly describe the Nutrition and Dietetic Service offered when meeting and talking with colleagues looking to buy dietetic services.
It is very useful to have data on the service, which may be in the form of a performance scorecard and include areas such as:
- Number of referrals and sources of referrals – consultant/practice/locality
- Proportion of inappropriate referrals
- Demand versus capacity information
- Length of waiting list and how this has changed/is changing/other variations during the year
- Where is the service (s) provided and access and by hard to reach groups
- Percentage of DNAs and cancellations and are there any trends
- How is the service paid for? Is the service undertaking activities that it is not paid to do?
- What do patients think about the service? It is important that patients are included in the design and evaluation of services. This could be through different methods including focus groups, face to face interviews, case studies, patient stories and questionnaires.
- Skill mix – who delivers what parts of the service?
- What competences are needed to deliver the outcomes? Is there a gap between the competencies of staff versus the services required to be delivered?
- What competences do the team have, how else could these competences be used?
- Multi-professional or agency working – how does the service contribute to care pathways?
- How does the service contribute to healthcare standards, implementing NICE guidance, implementing NSFs or reducing demand in other parts of the system?
- What areas of good practice, case studies are there that could help demonstrate the service provided to patients?
- What else does the service do which supports patients or other professionals to deliver nutritional care but which is not face to face contact and how much time does is allocated to this?
- Can the service generate income? And if so how and by how much?
