Northern Lincolnshire and Goole Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Briefing Books Improves Data Accuracy and Activity Reporting for Northern Lincolnshire and Goole, Removing Risk and Optimising Trust Performance
A Picture of the Trust
Northern Lincolnshire and Goole Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust was established as a combined hospital and community Trust in 2001, and achieved Foundation status in May 2007.
As its name suggests, the Trust operates all hospitals in Scunthorpe, Grimsby and Goole. It delivers a full range of emergency secondary care services, including intensive and high dependency care, a comprehensive range of planned services and local provision of secondary care diagnostic services, to a population of 440,000 across a wide geographic area around the Humber estuary. Employing 7,100 staff, the Trust has an annual budget of £275 million.
The Challenge
As in all Trusts, Northern Lincolnshire and Goole Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust faces the challenge of ensuring all departments and the Trust as a whole operate on a robust business footing.
As part of its business plan, the Trust must look to control costs and deliver services within tariff income levels. This involves taking action on services which are currently spending more than tariff income levels, as well as improving productivity in key areas such as ward and theatre time usage.
Improved access to data and departmental reporting is key to the Trust meeting these challenges, in order to give the Trust board the visibility of where improvements and efficiency gains can be made, and to learn lessons from departments and specialities which are performing well.
The Solution: Ardentia’s Data Warehouse and Briefing Books
The Trust is currently rolling out Ardentia’s Data Warehouse solution to all staff, in order to give them access to their own clinical dashboard with the data relevant to their speciality and departmental activity.
To meet immediate business priorities and reporting requirements, the Trust’s Information team has deployed Ardentia’s Briefing Books to support unified and consistent reporting, and improve access to data across all hospital sites.
Briefing Books is a feature of Ardentia’s Cassius Reporting Suite, and provides a single point of access to groups of related Cassius Reports, web-based Forms, URL links and other non-Cassius files.
Briefing Books have been designed to enable Trust staff to access all the resources required to perform a particular business process or task in an easy and efficient manner.
The Benefits
Avoiding risk and harnessing external expertise
Previously, the Trust had its own in-house reporting solution, but following the merger a new solution was needed. The board did not want another in-house solution which would leave the Trust in a vulnerable position: such systems are developed and maintained by a small number of internal staff and if these key people leave, the knowledge of the system leaves with them. That could put the Trust in a risky situation.
The Trust therefore went through the procurement process and chose Ardentia because of its experience within all levels of the NHS, and its proven robust Data Warehouse and reporting solutions, which are being used by Trusts across the country.
Ardentia manages risk as part of the contact, and the Trust has been able to benefit from the company’s expertise and experience in deploying business intelligence solutions across the complex NHS Trust operating environment.
Single reporting solution for consistent, reliable data
The Trust wanted a single, end-to-end solution from a single supplier to ensure a streamlined approach to data management, and to keep data consistent and reliable – a single version of the truth.
Previously, data was published in multiple sources, over email, the network, or on the Trust’s Intranet. This led to confusion over where the most current data was located, and could impact on the accuracy of Trust reporting.
The information was there, but staff were often unsure where to look or who to ask for the data. Briefing Books have overcome this issue, making data easily accessible to all staff.
Sarah Coombs, Information Business Development Manager at the Trust said:
“With Ardentia’s Briefing Books, all reports and data are located in a single source, accessible via a web link hosted on the Trust’s Intranet. Staff now have the reassurance of consistent and reliable data, and use the module to get the information they need on activity, performance, key targets and patient pathways to create their reports.”
The Cassius Reporting Suite and its Briefing Books module use standard software, making it easy for staff to navigate and access relevant activity data. The module’s ease of ease has freed up valuable internal resources within the Information team, enabling staff to focus on developing the data warehouse solution and to meet the future reporting requirements of the Trust.
Improved reporting and optimising Trust performance
Having one set of data in a single source has meant more reliable and more consistent data for staff, which in turn has improved overall reporting. Finance and budget reports are all included in the Briefing Books, creating a single place for staff to log in to access key targets, operational data, finance, and information on available resource.
Sarah Coombs added:
“The Briefing Books module has been well received by senior Trust directors, corporate level staff and the executive board, who are able to get customised reports on specific areas of activity. Using these reports, staff can identify areas where improvements need to be made, and also evaluate those departments performing well in order to extend these successful management processes Trust-wide, to boost overall performance.”
The Trust board has the ability to drill down to analyse how business units and directorates are performing, to monitor performance levels and look at ways to streamline and improve processes, to ensure services are delivered within income.
Future Plans
The long-term goal is to migrate staff onto Ardentia’s Data Warehouse solution, which will provide them with customised activity and clinical data through a personal user dashboard, as well as additional quality indicators such as patient experience and health & safety data.
The Briefing Books solution meets current reporting requirements and is playing an important role in giving staff the visibility to analyse performance and make targeted improvements. Crucially, it is also freeing up valuable internal resource and giving information staff the ability to develop the Data Warehouse solution, to meet tomorrow’s reporting challenges.
