NHS England places Statistical Process Control at the heart of its new quality strategy

NHS England and the National Quality Board have published a new quality strategy (14th July 2026) for NHS-funded care in England, setting out a 10-year approach to improving patient safety, clinical effectiveness and people’s experience of care.

NHS England has embedded Statistical Process Control (SPC) as a core method for understanding performance and identifying meaningful change across the national quality measurement framework.

The Quality Strategy specifies the use of individual and moving range charts, often referred to as XmR charts, where sufficient data points are available. It explains that SPC should be used to distinguish routine variation within a system from special-cause signals that may indicate a genuine change and require further investigation.

This marks an important shift. SPC is now part of the baseline measurement framework for the NHS’s national quality strategy, rather than only a local improvement or specialist analytical tool.

Why SPC matters

Healthcare data is complex. Waiting times, admission levels, patient outcomes and service demand naturally rise and fall over time.

A single month’s performance, a simple average, or a red, amber, green rating can be misleading. Teams may react to normal variation, overlook emerging issues, or mistake short-term improvements for lasting change.

SPC provides a more reliable way to interpret performance. It helps users understand whether a change reflects ordinary variation, a sustained improvement, an emerging problem or an unusual event that requires investigation.

This enables clinical, operational, and executive teams to focus their attention where it is most needed.

A broad national application

The technical annex applies SPC principles across a wide range of quality measures, including:

• Elective waiting times
• Ambulance Category 2 response times
• Community services waiting lists
• Mental health follow-ups and out-of-area placements
• Smoking and obesity prevalence
• Maternity, neonatal and perinatal outcomes
• Infection and vaccination measures
• Hospital admission indicators

The breadth of these measures is important. NHS England is applying SPC across operational performance, population health, prevention, access, safety and clinical outcomes.

This creates a clear expectation that NHS organisations should move beyond static reporting and use analytical methods that help people understand what is genuinely changing.

From identifying a signal to understanding the cause

An SPC chart can show that something has changed, but it does not always explain why.

This is where Kensa Health’s Health Insights platform adds value.

Health Insights applies SPC to linked health and care datasets, allowing users to identify meaningful change, unwarranted variation and emerging operational risk. It then enables them to move beyond the headline measure and investigate the organisations, services, pathways and patient cohorts that sit behind it.

For example, a system may identify a special-cause signal in emergency admissions, ambulance response times, delayed discharge or elective waiting lists.

Health Insights can help users explore:

• Which organisations or services are contributing to the change
• Whether the issue is concentrated within a particular pathway
• Which patient groups are most affected
• Whether the change is linked to demand, capacity, access or service design
• Whether an intervention has resulted in sustained improvement

This ability to move from signal to explanation is critical. It helps NHS teams understand where to act, rather than simply confirming that performance has changed.

A platform designed for operational use

Kensa Health’s approach is designed to make advanced analytics useful to people working across the health and care system.

Health Insights brings together linked data, SPC, pathway analysis and cohort-level investigation within a single platform. It supports decision-making at system, organisation and service level, helping users see both the wider picture and the operational detail behind it.

The platform can support arrange of use cases, including:

• Urgent and emergency care
• Elective recovery
• Community services
• Mental health
• Continuing healthcare
• Population health management
• Demand and capacity planning
• High-intensity service users
• Discharge and admission avoidance

The aim is not to produce more dashboards. It is to help teams identify where meaningful change is taking place, understand what is driving it and decide what to do next.

Connecting insight with delivery

Kensa Health can also connect analytical insight with practical service delivery.

The broader Kensa Health group combines analytics, virtual care technology, and regulated homecare services. This enables data to be used both to identify problems and to design and support interventions.

For example, Health Insights may identify a cohort at increased risk of hospital admission or readmission. Kensa Health’s virtual care platform can then support remote monitoring, while its clinical monitoring services and CQC-regulated care teams can provide additional support in the home.

This creates a direct link between:

• Identifying a population or pathway at risk
• Understanding the cause of the problem
• Designing an intervention
• Delivering care or monitoring services
• Measuring whether the intervention has worked

The same analytical framework can be used to track outcomes, monitor variation, and demonstrate whether changes are sustained.

Supporting quality across the care continuum

The NHS Quality Strategy recognises that improving quality requires a system-wide approach. Patient outcomes are shaped by what happens across hospitals, community services, primary care, mental health, social care and the home.

Kensa Health is structured around this same principle.

Our platform and services support health and care organisations throughout the care continuum. Health Insights identifies risk and variation. Our virtual care platform enables remote monitoring and care at home. Our monitoring, engineering, and regulated care services help turn digital interventions into operational services.

Together, these capabilities can support NHS organisations to:

• Identify deterioration and service pressure earlier
• Target interventions more accurately
• Reduce avoidable admissions and readmissions
• Support people safely at home
• Improve pathway performance
• Measure the impact of service changes
• Demonstrate outcomes and value

A stronger foundation for quality improvement

The publication of the Quality Strategy provides a clear national framework for the use of SPC across the NHS.

It reinforces the need for organisations to interpret performance over time, distinguish genuine change from normal variation and use data to guide action.

Kensa Health’s Health Insights platform already supports this approach. By combining SPC with linked data sets, pathway analysis, and cohort-level investigation, it helps NHS teams progress from measurement to understanding.

When combined with Kensa Health’s virtual care and regulated care services, that insight can also inform practical interventions and support delivery in the home and community.

NHS England has now placed SPC within its national quality framework. The opportunity is to use it as part of a wider operating model that connects data, decision-making and care delivery.

To learn how Kensa Health can support your quality improvement goals through data-driven insights, virtual care and community services, contact our team on 0330 380 2236 or complete our online enquiry form.

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