Helping the NHS turn costing data into better decisions
With decades of experience in NHS finance and costing, Jason Dean has become a trusted advisor to healthcare organisations looking to make better use of financial and operational data. Today, as a consultant at LOGEX, he works closely with NHS trusts to help them unlock insights from costing, benchmarking, income, and budgeting data, enabling better decisions that improve both financial sustainability and patient care.
We spoke with Jason about his career journey, the challenges facing healthcare providers today, and how LOGEX helps organisations transform data into meaningful action.
Can you tell us about your background and your role at LOGEX?
I have spent most of my career working in NHS finance, specialising in costing. During my time in the NHS, I became heavily involved with industry bodies and national initiatives, including serving as Vice Chair of the HFMA Costing Group. I regularly contributed to conferences and discussions around how healthcare organisations can make better use of costing information.
What has always motivated me is a genuine belief that costing data is one of the most valuable sources of intelligence available to healthcare organisations. It helps trusts understand how they perform compared with their peers, identify opportunities for improvement, and ultimately deliver better care.
At LOGEX, my role is to help customers realise those benefits. I work closely with trusts to ensure they are not only producing costing data but also using it effectively. I am also involved in developing our benchmarking capabilities, supporting the evolution of our income solution, and contributing to other products such as budgeting.
What attracted you to LOGEX?
LOGEX had already built a strong reputation for benchmarking and healthcare analytics. What excited me was the opportunity to combine my NHS experience with a platform that helps organisations understand cost variation and identify its underlying drivers, whether that relates to care delivery, resource utilisation, or procurement decisions. In short: understanding not just what is expensive, but why it is expensive.
The ability to analyse patient-level costs, understand differences in activity and resource utilisation, and support trusts in identifying opportunities for improvement is incredibly powerful. It allows us to bring data to life and help organisations make informed decisions that have a real impact.
How has your role evolved over time?
Earlier in my career, I was very hands-on with costing submissions and project delivery, managing timelines, validating data, and overseeing submissions in detail. Today, trusts are much more capable of managing many of these processes themselves.
As a result, my focus has shifted towards helping customers overcome specific challenges, interpret their results, and most importantly, make use of the information available to them. The value lies not just in collecting data, but in understanding what it can tell you and how it can drive improvement.
What are the biggest challenges healthcare providers face when it comes to costing data?
The first challenge is obtaining the right source data. Healthcare organisations deal with complex systems and data sets, and ensuring information is available in the required format is not always straightforward. We help customers navigate these challenges and work closely with them to achieve the best possible data quality.
The second challenge is time. Many trusts have talented finance teams with the expertise to analyse costing data, but they often lack the capacity to do so alongside their many other responsibilities.
This is where LOGEX can make a difference. Through our analytics, benchmarking tools, and consultancy support, we help organisations identify opportunities and perform detailed analysis that may otherwise take significant internal resources.
What do customers value most about LOGEX?
One of the things our customers value most is our willingness to go the extra mile. NHS finance teams operate under significant pressure and often work within tight deadlines. We understand those realities because many of us have worked in the NHS ourselves.
Customers also appreciate that our consultants combine deep expertise in healthcare finance with practical NHS experience. Having worked in similar environments ourselves, we can help organisations apply insights from LOGEX to support better decisions and drive meaningful improvement.
Can you share an example of how LOGEX has helped a customer?
Recently, one trust used our benchmarking insights to identify that the cost of certain cardiac devices was significantly higher than that of peer organisations. Armed with that evidence, they were able to strengthen procurement discussions and negotiate better pricing.
It is a simple example, but it demonstrates how reliable benchmarking can help organisations make more informed decisions and generate tangible financial benefits. More broadly, these insights help trusts pinpoint areas where improvement initiatives can have the greatest impact on both finances and patient care.
The NHS is undergoing significant change, with increasing pressure on organisations to improve productivity, deliver financial sustainability, and support longer-term transformation. What opportunities do you see for healthcare organisations in the coming years?
One of the biggest opportunities comes from the move towards longer-term planning. Historically, organisations often worked within annual planning cycles, making it difficult to realise the full benefits of service improvement initiatives.
With longer planning horizons now becoming more common, trusts have greater scope to use costing data as part of sustained improvement programmes. This allows organisations to identify productivity opportunities, prioritise the right initiatives, and deliver meaningful improvements over time.
Costing data has an important role to play in helping providers understand where efficiencies and productivity gains can be achieved while maintaining or improving quality of care.
As healthcare organisations face increasing pressure to improve performance and deliver sustainable change, the quality of the support they receive matters more than ever. What makes the LOGEX team special?
The LOGEX UK team has an exceptional culture. Everyone is focused on helping both colleagues and customers succeed, and there is a strong sense of shared purpose across the organisation.
Many of us come from NHS backgrounds, and we retain that commitment to supporting healthcare providers and improving outcomes. We also work closely with colleagues across Europe, particularly in the Netherlands and the Nordics, which creates valuable opportunities to exchange ideas and learn from one another.
What continues to motivate you after all these years?
The variety is a big part of it. While costing remains at the heart of what I do, I have also been able to contribute to benchmarking, budgeting, income solutions, and product development. Every day brings new challenges and opportunities to learn.
Most importantly, I enjoy knowing that our work can make a genuine difference. Helping NHS organisations become more productive, make better decisions, and ultimately improve patient care remains a strong source of motivation for me.