A report by the Medical Technology Group (MTG) has set out a roadmap for sharing best practices to end "deeply embedded" variation in NHS performance.

NHS patients who live just thirteen miles apart have access to dramatically different performing hospitals despite being under the same administrative board, the ‘Levelling Up or Levelling Down: The Impact of Integrated Care Systems on the Delivery of Care’ report revealed.

An analysis of NHS England monthly referral to treatment data between December 2021 and November last year found that Wakefield treated the most patients - in relation to the size of their population - while its neighbouring equivalent in Leeds ranked as one of the lowest.

The report did stress that more patients are being seen within health and care settings. Overall, more than 6.1 million patient pathways were completed from December 2021 to November last year, more than a 45 per cent improvement from the last MTG report that looked at regional and local variation in NHS performance.

However, across the two-year research project, analysis revealed that variation between the highest and worst performing regions of the NHS has persisted.

The MTG is now calling on NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care to implement measures to ensure that the medical technology, innovations and leadership methods that have contributed to these highest performing regions are implemented across the health service to help end this variation. 

Chair of the MTG, Barbara Harpham, said: “Good practice is abundant across the NHS in England, whether nationally-led or driven within local NHS organisations.

"However, it is clear that it is often isolated and not regularly shared with those parts of the NHS where it can make an enormous difference in working through the backlog, improving the quality of care and easing pressure on the workforce."

She said the recommendations in the report set out a roadmap for the NHS to deliver improvements by replicating, adapting, and adopting this best practice, providing the support to ensure medical technologies and innovations are available for every patient in the NHS regardless of where they live.

The MTG has called on NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care to drive the sharing of best practice across the NHS through the following recommendations.

They recommend that NHS England to analyse the ICB areas where there are persistent challenges and variation, and provide support for them to raise their standards to meet the needs of patients.

They also suggest NHS England identifies areas and examples of best practice within the ICS system that can be shared and adopted in areas with persistent challenges.

For ICBs, they recommend analysing pockets of poor performance within their own systems, and set up interventions, resources, and support to raise standards across their ICB footprint.

ICBs should strive to raise the standards of their poorest performing SICBLs, and improve patients' access to good care, the MTG said. 

They also said ICBs should ensure that patients have access to the most appropriate medical technologies, regardless of where they receive care within an ICB.