Supporting the removal of 8,688 patients from NHS waiting lists and reaching up to 12 times more patients than manual validation allowed
| Outcomes at a glance |
|---|
| Outcomes |
| • 8,688 patients removed from waiting lists, freeing capacity for those who need it most |
| • Tool released to General Availability, making it available to any NHS trust via the FDP Solution Exchange |
| Reach and delivery |
| • 145 validation campaigns initiated across participating trusts during the two-year development phase |
| • 96,242 patient pathways contacted and 66,723 responses received |
Patient Led Validation asks patients directly, by text message and letter, whether they still need their hospital appointment, then updates the waiting list from their answers. A TPHC business analyst shaped its design and supported its rollout through to NHS-wide release.
The challenge
NHS trusts are required to periodically validate patient waiting lists, confirming that every patient still needs their appointment. The scale of this task has grown significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic extended backlogs across almost every speciality. In most trusts, validation has historically been an administrative task: staff manually reviewing patient records against clinical history to determine whether each person still requires care. It is time-consuming, costly, and carries the risk of human error.
Some trusts have deployed Patient Engagement Portals to communicate directly with patients, but most are not easily usable at scale. Contacting and tracking responses for tens of thousands of patients, then reconciling those responses with live waiting lists, requires considerable manual management. Without automation, the administrative burden of large-scale validation campaigns makes them impractical to run with the frequency waiting lists require.
The result is a system in which unnecessary appointments remain on waiting lists for longer than they should, occupying capacity that could otherwise be used to treat patients with genuine, unmet clinical need. For every patient who no longer needs their appointment but has not been removed, someone who does need care waits longer.
Our role in building the Patient Led Validation tool
Work was delivered by a multidisciplinary team including NHSE data engineers, project managers and a Business Analyst from TPHC. Our Business Analyst served as the vital bridge between NHS users, technical teams, and programme sponsors throughout the development and rollout of the Patient Led Validation (PLV) tool. By translating frontline workflows into clear product requirements and ensuring user insight directly shaped design, training, and adoption, they played a central role in embedding the tool in real-world practice.
The tool was developed at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, piloted at London North West University Healthcare NHS Trust and North Cumbria Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust, and released into General Availability for NHS-wide use.
Our Business Analyst acted as the primary interface between clinical users and the development team, gathering requirements and translating them into user stories and wireframes for the engineers to build from. A critical early task was mapping the process flows for existing validation work, so the PLV tool could be built around how validation actually happens in practice rather than how it was assumed to happen. This made adoption easier for frontline staff from the outset.
The team, alongside the Business Analyst, designed and administered user surveys, developed training materials including user guides, demonstrations, and video tutorials, and produced governance materials to support the multiple steering groups, boards, and committees involved in the General Availability release process.
The PLV tool provides a configurable, schedulable communications platform that integrates waiting lists with existing Patient Engagement Portals, enabling the mass validation, booking, and discharge of patients based on their responses. It sends SMS and letter communications automatically, with a dedicated telephone line available for patients who prefer not to respond digitally.
The impact
Over the two-year development phase, the tool delivered measurable results across participating trusts:
• 145 campaigns initiated, each a communication wave to a cohort of patients asking them to confirm whether they still need their appointment
• 96,242 patient pathways messaged via SMS and letter
• 66,723 patient responses received
• 8,688 waiting list removals, freeing capacity for patients who need it
Trusts using the tool can now contact and receive responses from around ten to twelve times more patients in the same amount of time than was possible before. That increase in throughput directly frees clinical and administrative capacity, allowing validation to happen at the frequency and scale waiting lists require.
The tool is now available to any NHS trust via the FDP Solution Exchange following its General Availability release, meaning these benefits are no longer limited to the original development sites.
What users of the tool are saying
“At LNWH, we’re proud to have played a leading role in developing and testing the Patient Led Validation tool. What used to be a lengthy, admin-heavy process is now much swifter and easier to track, with patients easily able to tell us when they no longer need an appointment and clinical teams easily able to review cases when they need to. We’re excited by the way patient led validation empowers patients to play a much more active part in their care, which we know they appreciate from the excellent response rate.”
Tim Marshall, Head of Elective Care, London North West University Healthcare NHS Trust
“The Patient Led Validation module has improved the experience for our patients at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust by making it easier for them to confirm their place on the waiting list and let us know whether they still need their appointment. By replacing outdated processes with something faster and more convenient, we’re reducing missed appointments and keeping lists accurate, enabling us to provide patients with treatment in order of those who need it most, and who have been waiting longest.”
Dr Roger Chinn, Chief Medical Officer, Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
“Patient Led Validation is helping us to reduce our waiting lists, and more importantly, ensuring we focus our efforts on people who really need our help. Integrating our PLV process with FDP has meant we have been able to streamline and automate much of the previous process, saving time and resources.”
Colin Holmes, Head of Planning and Strategy, North Cumbria Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust
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