The Benchmarking Partnership

Pathology Demand Optimisation Programmes 2025

The Benchmarking Partnership's Demand Optimisation work began as a research programme to analyse the impact of appropriate testing on patient outcomes, contributing initially towards papers focusing on HbA1c testing for management of patients with Diabetes, before expanding into other topics.

The analytical methods created to help facilitate those initial research papers eventually become two components of the Demand Optimisation Programme  following a significant amount of development time invested in pilots and focus groups with laboratory teams, GP leads, clinical specialists and patient representatives.

Both components have since developed a proven track record of helping NHS Pathology providers and their respective GPs to generate significant cost savings, both to themselves and to the wider health economy. This is achieved through better patient management, reduced wastage, and more focused, effective, and appropriate testing, helping underpin the foundations of the principles of "right test, right patient, right time".

Demand Optimisation in Pathology is one of the very few things a laboratory can do to generate cost savings whilst simultaneously improving patient outcomes, and without requiring any significant investment in terms of financial cost, time, or resource. Five - and even six - figure year-on-year savings are not uncommon with opportunities identified through this programme. They also usually only take very little effort to initiate.

The two distinct components of the Demand Optimisation Programme include the GP Testing Analyses reports, and the Diabetes Patient Management Programme. They are independent of each other and can be done separately, although they work most effectively when together.

DEMAND OPTIMISATION PROGRAMME - GP TESTING ANALYSES

The GP Testing Analyses component provides detailed analyses of GP test usage, relating rates of testing for key markers to demographic factors such as age, deprivation and ethnicity, and include analyses to show on-trend themes such as "Equity of Access". 

These monthly reports provide timely information around variation in testing from primary care, however the true value of this component of the programme comes through the optional application of cost data (either/or "cost to lab" or "cost to purchase"), and the AI-powered forecasting tools which calculate projected volume and cost of each key marker test over the coming year. You're welcome to input your own test costs, or use our "average" national costs from our database for reference.

DEMAND OPTIMISATION PROGRAMME - DIABETES PATIENT MANAGEMENT

According to Diabetes UK, the NHS spends around £10.7bn per year on Diabetes, which equates to around 6% of its overall budget. Around £6.2bn of this is spent on Diabetes complications. Research - including some that we've contributed towards ourselves - shows that more appropriate and effective testing can lead to better patient outcomes, including significant reduction in the risk of complications. In other words, the relatively small budget spent on testing for monitoring and management of Diabetes can make a huge different to the wider health economy.

The Diabetes Patient Management component of our Pathology Demand Optimisation Programme uses anonymised patient-level HbA1c testing data to generate detailed reports analysing the effectiveness of testing in management of patients with diabetes in primary care. It focuses on both ends of the spectrum in terms of identifying cost savings through reduction of wastage (tests performed too frequently, particularly on patients with 'optimal' control) whilst also helping clinicians to target additional testing towards the highest risk patients within your population (reducing 'missed' critical tests, and therefore making a positive impact on the wider patient pathway). A successful demand optimisation strategy built around these data will lead to more effective testing, reducing wastage and potentially also increasing the number of clinically appropriate tests in the most at-risk patients.

A semi-automated report to GPs is included within this programme, which highlights high-risk patients currently overdue their routine management HbA1c test. It has been the subject of a piece of research work undertaken at Cambridge University Hospitals from 2020-2023 to assess the effectiveness of the programme as an intervention. Initial findings presented at EASD 2024 showed a statistically significant margin of improved performance in those engaged with the programme vs those who were not. The full research paper has been submitted for publication. If you're looking for an opportunity for your laboratory to deliver significant added value to the patient pathway, whilst simultaneously delivering potentially very significant cost savings to your organisation, then our Demand Optimisation Programmes are something you might wish to consider exploring further.

FURTHER INFORMATION AND ADDITIONAL GUIDANCE DOCUMENTS

Information leaflets relating to the two components can be downloaded below, in addition to a range of demand optimisation and data requirement guide documents. We are also in the process of building a repository of free demand optimisation guidance documents and papers, some of which are already available to download.

For further information on any of our programmes please see below. We're also always happy to speak with you via Teams, with absolutely no obligation to commit. We don't employ a sales and marketing team, we just have people who are passionate about Pathology who are happy to share our work with you, so if you'd like to know more about the work we do and the services we provide, please contact us at info@pathology.support