NHS trusts and integrated care boards manage engagement across thousands of patients, partner organisations and clinical stakeholders, under a statutory duty to involve people in decisions about their care and in service planning. In 2026, organisations that do this well share one defining trait: a single platform that holds the full engagement record, withstands constant staff turnover, and produces evidence instantly when a governance board or regulator requests it.
What makes stakeholder engagement different in healthcare?
Health and care engagement rarely sits inside one organisation. An Integrated Care System spans trusts, primary care, local authorities, the third sector and patient groups, often organised across tiers: place, system and regional levels, each with distinct priorities. A service redesign may require sign-off from clinicians, patients, commissioners and a scrutiny committee, sometimes simultaneously.
Layered on top is the statutory duty to involve. NHS bodies must involve patients and the public in decisions about how services are planned, developed and delivered. This duty is set out in the Health and Care Act 2022 and is assessed by the Care Quality Commission as part of its ‘well-led’ framework. As with any public consultation, the long-standing Gunning Principles apply: consult while the outcome is still open, give people enough information to respond, consider responses conscientiously, and show the decision-maker took them into account.
None of that is demonstrable without a record. Not a folder of meeting notes, but a dated, searchable log of who was involved, when, how and what they said.
Why spreadsheets stop working at NHS scale
In practice, shared files struggle under this level of complexity. Version control slips, engagement records fragment, and audit trails become unreliable. This is exactly the challenge faced by the NHS Business Services Authority during the Future NHS Workforce Solution, a national programme replacing the Electronic Staff Record across more than 300 NHS organisations in England and Wales.
We’d been relying on a mishmash of spreadsheets and a small local system. We needed something that gave the programme a proper overview of our stakeholders and contacts, all in one place. — Matt Swindells, Implementation Lead, NHSBSA
We serve over 300 organisations. Without a central system, keeping track of who had been spoken to, and about what, was incredibly difficult. — David Bromilow, Implementation Lead, NHSBSA
Moving to a shared platform gave the programme a single point of reference, so any team member could pick up a relationship without losing context, and governance meetings could be prepared for with an accurate, current record rather than a scramble the night before.
Coordinating engagement across an Integrated Care System
NHS West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board’s Leeds office ran into a related but distinct problem: engagement work scattered across separate organisations, each collecting feedback in its own way, with no shared view of who had already been asked what.
It’s about listening, acting on what people tell us, and then feeding back to people, so they know that what they’re saying is making a difference. — Adam Stewart, Senior Insight and Engagement Adviser, NHS West Yorkshire ICB
Moving to a system built around a single shared stakeholder record, rather than separate tools for each organisation, allowed one sign-up to feed a city-wide involvement network. Individuals could choose which partner organisations they wanted to hear from.
Sign-ups grew from around 1,800 to over 2,600, while adoption expanded from five to ten organisations in Leeds, plus one at the wider West Yorkshire level.
The same structure also enabled consistent capture of demographic data across organisations, supporting representation analysis by population group, something the separate tools it replaced could not achieve.
What should healthcare stakeholder engagement software include?
Drawing on how NHS organisations actually use these platforms, the functional list looks like this:
-
A shared stakeholder record across organisations
One person, whether a patient representative, a councillor or a partner organisation contact, held once and visible across every project they’re involved in, not duplicated per team -
Patient and public involvement tools
Surveys, consultations and event management are built in, so involvement activity and the resulting feedback sit against the same stakeholder record rather than in a separate survey tool -
Demographic and equalities data capture
GDPR-compliant collection of protected characteristics and population data, so engagement teams can see where representation is strong and where it needs work, not just how many responses came in -
An audit trail that holds up to scrutiny
Every interaction date-stamped, exportable and filterable, ready for a governance committee, a CQC assessment or a Freedom of Information request without a manual reconstruction exercise -
Continuity through staff turnover
Health and care programmes run for years. A platform that holds the full record means a new starter, or a colleague covering for someone on leave, can pick up a relationship without losing the history -
NHS-grade data security
The NHS Data Security and Protection Toolkit (DSPT), audited annually, alongside ISO 27001:2022, Cyber Essentials Plus and UK-hosted data, are the markers of a vendor that has been through NHS procurement, not just a features list
What efficiency gains look like in practice
Organisations using Tractivity, the UK stakeholder relationship management (SRM) platform, report an average 20% improvement in stakeholder management efficiency, equivalent to £5,000 to £8,200 per professional each year. This is driven by removing around two hours of manual work per day, including reporting, chasing records across systems and updating spreadsheets, across a typical engagement team.
For an ICB or trust engagement team - often just two to eight people covering a wide remit - that’s meaningful time returned to the parts of the job that need people, such as talking to patients and communities, not maintaining records of having done so.
See Tractivity in action
Tractivity works with 27 named NHS and healthcare organisations, from Integrated Care Boards to national delivery programmes, including NHS Business Services Authority and NHS West Yorkshire ICB.
If you’re managing stakeholder engagement across a trust, ICB or national programme and want to see how the platform handles it, we’d be glad to show you.
Book a personalised demo with the team.
Frequently asked questions
