Table 1 Experiences of making business cases for an FLS

[Making business cases is a] total and utter brick wall… and after a while you do lose the will to live. [Participant ID: 029]

I will never be able to write a good business case, because I can’t. I don’t like doing them, I get bored, it’s not where my skills are so don’t ask me to do it. [Participant ID: 009]

You constantly find you’ve got to go digging around for statistics. You’re trying to find numbers from data that isn’t collected… [it’s] all done on percentages and sort of guesswork. [Participant ID: 008]

If you start getting into areas of complexity, so frailty complexity, where you get different services crossing: whose budget is it? It’s harder to cost them… just things like this don’t fit into categories. [Participant ID: 007]

[The service manager's] priorities are dependent on their interests. [Participant ID: 030]

We felt that we were setting up and driving towards an improved Hip Fracture Service… but we were doing it without the support of our management. [Participant ID: 038]