Is Ardens Manager Still Worth It? Rethinking PCN Population Health Data Beyond the IIF

As a PCN leader, you're likely questioning whether Ardens Manager is still worth the investment now that the IIF has been reduced. You may be using it primarily for the Network Contract DES dashboard or seeking better ways to understand your population health data.

How to use Ardens Manager beyond contract monitoring

While many of us became familiar with Ardens Manager for tracking IIF metrics, its true power lies elsewhere. During a recent conversation with Charmaine from Ardens, I was reminded of the platform's deeper capabilities that often go unused.

The population health data dashboard you're probably not using

If you're looking to understand your patient demographics better, the Population Dashboard breaks down your population by age, demographics, ethnicity, deprivation, and health conditions.

Imagine planning your next vaccination campaign. Instead of estimating, you could know exactly how many 70-79-year-olds you have across your PCN. For childhood immunisations, you'd know precisely how many children need vaccinating, making workforce planning significantly easier.

What's particularly valuable is the ability to drill down—looking at your 40-49 year olds?

You can explore their gender breakdown, ethnic composition, deprivation status, and prevalent health conditions.

This might reveal, for instance, that mental health conditions are surprisingly common in this group, helping you target interventions more effectively.

Meeting Your Risk Stratification Obligations

With risk stratification now a requirement in the DES, PCNs are required to identify patients who would benefit most from continuity of care.

• Many PCNs are already segmenting their populations based on demographics, long term conditions and other factors.

• Risk stratification models are also available such as John Hopkins, Cambridge Multimorbidity Score and QRISK3

• These local approaches are often combined with digital tools like Ardens Manager for added visibility and coordination

If you're already using Ardens Manager, you already have:

• Patient segmentation by demographics (including deprivation and multimorbidities)

• Condition-specific stratification in dashboards like diabetes

• Continuity of care risk stratification that highlights patients needing regular contact with the same clinician

  
  

Ardens is actively expanding its risk stratification options and is reviewing several risk stratification models.

Supporting patients with complex needs 

For those focusing on integrated neighbourhood health, the dedicated dashboards for learning disabilities, mental health, physical disabilities, sensory impairments, and substance use disorders can help identify vulnerable patients who might otherwise fall through the cracks.

The safety alerts highligh patients who've missed appointments or who may be missing from appropriate registers are particularly valuable for maintaining quality care.

Understanding resource utilisation

The Appointments Dashboard reveals insights that aren't available in your clinical system.

Using Ardens Manager, you will be able to see:

• Where appointment wastage is occurring

• Which patients are using multiple appointments

• Whether appropriate staff members are seeing high, medium, and low-risk patients

• How effectively your PCN staff are being utilised

This information directly informs decisions about staff allocation and appointment systems that can improve efficiency across your network.

Is It Still Worth It?

100% yes if you want to effectively monitor your network performance and truly understand your population health.

The tool will:

1. Provide you with much greater visibility of what's happening at practice, PCN and ICB level

2. Help you understand your population in detail, informing service planning and resource allocation

3. Support you in meeting your obligations around population health management

4. Save time by automating data collection and analysis that would otherwise be manual

As we move toward greater focus on population health and integrated care, having easy access to detailed demographic and health information becomes increasingly important for effective decision-making.

If you're already using Ardens Manager but primarily for IIF metrics, I'd encourage you to explore the population dashboard and other features. You might be surprised by what you discover about your patient population and the actionable insights you can gain.

We'll be exploring these topics further in our upcoming webinar on June 4th. 

Register Today

In the meantime, Ardens is gathering feedback on risk stratification models that primary care networks (PCNS) are using to inform future dashboard development. Please share your thoughts here.

About Us

THC Primary Care is an award-winning healthcare consultancy specialising in Primary Care Network Management and the creator of the Business of Healthcare Podcast. With over 20 years in the industry, we've supported more than 200 PCNs through interim management, training, and consultancy.

Our expertise spans project management and business development across both private and public sectors. Our work has been published in the London Journal of Primary Care, and we've authored over 250 blogs sharing insights about primary care networks.

Find out more about THC Primary Care and follow us on Linkedin.