Commissioning

Evidence searches for commissioning.

The suggested time to allocate to this search is 4 to 8 hours.

Planning

Establish the precise purpose of the search. Is the requestor:

  • commissioning a new service?
  • decommissioning an old one?
  • redesigning an existing one?

If changes to a service are being made, or a new service is being commissioned, what are they being based on?

  • Is it related to a government initiative?
  • Is the aim to copy best practice from elsewhere (‘do once and share’)?

Establish how sensitive information regarding this search is. For example, if it is about decommissioning, the requester may not wish for the information to be shared or discussed publicly.

Execution

Generally, focus on resources that have economic evaluations or healthcare economics or social return-on-investment (ROI) figures in them, or that report on system-wide impacts.

Economic evaluations

For economic evaluations you should search using one or more of the below.

  • National Institute for Health Research’s (NIHR) Health Technology Assessment (HTA).
  • National Institute for Health and Care Excellence's (NICE’s) technology appraisal guidance.
  • International HTA database (INAHTA).
  • University of York: Centre for Reviews and Dissemination (CRD) Note that the Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects (DARE), NHS Economic Evaluation Database (NHSEED) and Health Technology Assessment (HTA) databases are no longer updated).
Social policy related queries

For social policy related queries you should search using one or more of the below.

  • Social Care Institute for Excellence’s (SCIE’s) Social Care Online for social care queries.
  • Social Policy and Practice (now available via NHS OpenAthens from Ovid).
  • Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts (ASSIA) if you have a local subscription.
Health business and technology sources

Search these sources and subject-specific sites appropriate to what is being commissioned.

  • Independent charities.
  • Governmental and non-governmental organisations (NGOs).
  • Think tanks like The Health Foundation, The King's Fund and Nuffield Trust.

See the suggested resources in Health Business and Technology and also evidence searching for business cases.

If these searches retrieve nothing, search appropriate bibliographic databases, limiting results to the last 5 years and/or preprint servers.

If you want to search Google for key terms

Search Google or other search engines for key terms, or a product’s or manufacturer’s name, or include terms such as:

  • “service models”
  • “service standards”
  • “service specifications”

This can unearth NHS Trust/government sites reporting where similar services have been de/commissioned.

Limit by domain

You may want to search through other NHS organisation policies and publications via an advanced Google search. You should include “NHS” in your terms, and/or specify your country as UK, and/or limit the search to sites ending with “…nhs.uk” URLs using the limits "site:nhs.uk or inurl:nhs".

Consider an email to mailing lists where Knowledge and Library Service (KLS) colleagues at other Trusts may be able to help, see mailing list enquiries.

Results

Make sure the full text of the results you return are open access, as far as possible, as the requester will likely be sharing the results with a multi-disciplinary (even multi-organisational) team.

For each of your results, provide a top-line summary of what the service cost, what it improved, and what money it saved/brought-in.

Example

Example 1

Hope this email finds you well.

Please find attached the results of your requested evidence search for "Impact of the Hello Nurse…”

The attached word doc contains results arranged in reverse chronological order. I regret that even a sensitive search did not uncover much, though this suggests your role is innovative, so if you would like help evaluating it, or adding to the body of evidence by publishing on it, let me know and we can put you in touch with the right colleagues

If the attached report isn't what you had in mind, let me know and I'll be happy to search again with revised criteria.

You can get to the full text of articles within the attached report by clicking on the hyperlinks to download them using your NHS Athens username and password (let me know if you need reminder of your username/password, or if you need to set-up an account).

The articles we do not have direct access to will have to be ordered through our inter-library loans service which may take a few days to arrive. To make article requests please fill out the journal requests form on the Knowledge library services web page at: [link to web page].

Look forward to hearing from you…

Report compiled by librarian.

Page last reviewed: 4 August 2023
Next review due: 4 August 2024