Decoding ICB Expectations: The 5 Data Pillars Every Health Charity Must Master

To align with the 2025 Framework, health charities need reporting systems capable of delivering rigorous evidence across five specific areas.

As Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) transition into strategic commissioners, the reporting requirements placed on VCSE providers are becoming increasingly sophisticated. The question for charity leaders is no longer “Did we meet our target?” but rather, “Can our data prove our value under scrutiny?”

To secure funding post-April 2026, charities needs to master five key data pillars.

1. Performance (Activity & Demand)
This remains the foundation. ICBs still need to know about referrals, caseloads, and waiting times. However, the data must be cleaner and more real-time than ever before to identify bottlenecks.

2. Productivity (Efficiency & Value)
This is where many VCSEs struggle. ICBs are under immense financial pressure and need to see “value for money.” Your data needs to track metrics like advocacy hours per case, time to resolution, and capacity versus demand trends. You must demonstrate efficient throughput without compromising quality.

3. Outcomes (What Changed for People)
It is critical to move beyond anecdotal success. Services need rigorous baseline and follow-up measures (such as PROMs). You need to be able to report the percentage of service users who improved, remained stable, or deteriorated, aggregated by cohort.

4. Impact (The “So What?”)
Impact is where outcomes meet the wider health system. Your data needs to link your service outcomes to broader system benefits—for example, demonstrating how your intervention reduced escalation to secondary care or prevented A&E attendances.

5. Demographics & Inequalities (The Equity Lens)
Perhaps the most significant emphasis in the new framework is on health inequalities. It is no longer optional to dissect your data. You must have the analytical capability to split your outcomes (Pillar 3) by demographics (Pillar 5)—such as ethnicity, postcode (IMD), age, and sex—to prove that your service is closing the health equity gap, not just serving the easiest-to-reach populations.

The Need for an Audit Trail
Across all five pillars, ICBs require an audit trail. Consistent calculation rules and defensible data pipelines are essential so that results can be trusted and reproduced during review. Navigating this complexity doesn’t have to be done alone; Quematics is ready to take this journey along with you and work as a partner to collect your evidence, ensuring every metric stands up to ICB scrutiny.