Fixing the NHS’s Billion Pound Bottleneck: Ming Tang and the FDP to Finally Solve the Discharge Problem

The NHS is tackling one of its most expensive inefficiencies by using data to speed up hospital discharges and free thousands of beds across England.

More than 12,000 patients who are medically fit to leave hospital remain in beds each day, costing the health service more than £1 billion a year. The problem contributes to cancelled operations, overcrowded emergency departments and long waits for ambulances.

The move is being led by Ming Tang, NHS England’s chief data and analytics officer, who is overseeing the rollout of the Federated Data Platform, a system designed to give hospitals and councils a real-time view of patient flow. Tang said the aim was to “help teams see the same information at the same time, so decisions can be made faster and more safely”.

Where Discharge Breaks Down

Discharge is not a single step but a sequence of decisions across hospitals, councils, community teams and social care. When any link fails, patient flow stops. The consequences are well known: longer stays, rising costs and increasing risk to patients.

No one organisation owns the full picture. Accountability is fragmented, communication inconsistent. Many Trusts still rely on spreadsheets, static reports and phone calls. The data is old before it is used. Leaders are forced to plan from yesterday’s information, not today’s reality.

The NHS has built one of the world’s richest health datasets, yet remains poor in visibility. It can describe everything except what is happening right now.

Image: Ming Tang, Chief Data and Information Officer NHSE

The Fix: Ming Tang and the Federated Data Platform

Under Ming Tang’s leadership, that is beginning to change. Her work on the Federated Data Platform (FDP) is turning fragmented information into a single, usable source of truth.

Under Tang’s leadership, the Federated Data Platform aims to connect existing NHS and local government systems into one shared, live dashboard. It allows hospitals to see which patients are medically fit for discharge, the reasons for delay and where step-down capacity exists across their local area.

Councils and social-care providers can access the same view, improving coordination between hospitals and community services. The platform does not replace local systems but links them, creating a single source of information.

Health leaders believe this could reduce duplication, speed up decisions and make it easier to manage pressure across Integrated Care Systems.

From Reactive to Predictive

The platform also marks a move from reactive management to predictive capability. Its analytics identify patients likely to face discharge barriers and trigger early interventions, such as arranging care packages or equipment at home before discharge day arrives.

Early modelling shows that this approach can reduce length of stay by 10 to 15 per cent and release between £500 million and £700 million in avoidable costs. In Tang’s own words, “This isn’t about dashboards. It’s about foresight.”

Improving discharge flow is seen as central to NHS recovery. Freeing 2,500 beds could allow 200,000 additional elective operations each year. Every one per cent gain in timeliness could save up to £50 million across the system.Discharge is becoming the proof point for whether the NHS’s long-promised data transformation can finally translate into measurable performance.

A Cultural Shift Built on Trust

The success of the Federated Data Platform will depend as much on culture as on code. When every organisation sees the same data, trust replaces tension and accountability becomes shared.

Officials involved in the project, including Ayub Bhayat, Director of Data Services and Deputy Chief Data Analytics officer, describe it as a cultural change as much as a technical one. When hospitals, councils and care providers share the same information, trust improves and decisions are made faster.

Tang believes the approach could transform how local health and care systems work together. “Federation”, she has said, “is not just an IT principle but a way of leading.”

Data cannot move a patient, but it can remove the reasons for delay. If the new system succeeds, its impact will not be measured in dashboards but in empty beds, shorter waits and a system finally able to move.