The BBC has reported that the government will reveal in its latest white paper that GPs should have responsibility for much of England’s NHS budget, as it is thought this new form of financial leadership will improve overall patient experience.
Health Secretary Andrew Lansley is expected to say that GPs should take control of 80%, or around £80 billion, of the £105 billion budget for the NHS for mental health, hospital and community services in order to improve the NHS.
In the White Paper, Lansley is to argue that GPs are best placed to understand patients’ needs and to decide where the money should be spent, working together in formal partnerships in what would be a major shake-up of the NHS structure. The White Paper is also expected to make reference to the creation of an independent NHS board to oversee health services.
As GPs are the main source for providing community services it is important that GPs have a say in the way in the budget is spent. However, it remains to be seen whether this will indeed work successfully and if this is adopted this would represent a monumental change in the NHS.
If GPs are to play such a central role in the financial decisions of patient care then it is imperative that they have the best resources available to coordinate the treatment options that will deliver the highest quality of care, this makes Patient Level Costing even more invaluable by allowing GPs to monitor the costs for each specific patient will ensure a cost effective NHS.
Tagged: Andrew Lansley, community services, GPs, health secretary, leadership, monitor, NHS, NHS budget, patient care, patient experience, patient level costing
A health think tank has claimed that the NHS is in danger of over-exerting itself, with a huge increase in the number of patients admitted to A&E having been seen over the past five years.
The Independent reports on how statistics show that during this time, more than one million extra patients have been admitted to hospital. The main reason for the high figures is that doctors are said to be admitting people with less severe conditions than in the past. The report by the Nuffield Trust revealed that such high attendances will threaten to bankrupt the NHS if the trend continues.
Accident and Emergency admissions account for more than a third of all patients in hospital and cost about £11bn a year. They have been rising for decades but have soared by almost 12 per cent since 2005, costing an extra £330m a year. The rise is linked to a dramatic increase in short-stay admissions. In England, almost 600,000 more patients were admitted for one day or less in 2008-9 than were five years earlier.
To cut the increasing hospital admissions, the NHS needs to have access to exact details of how long patients stay in hospital for and what the precise costs for each patient. Ardentia’s business intelligence solutions can, and do, deliver this information for NHS Trusts. Ardentia’s Core Activity Reporting enables Trusts to analyse A&E attendances and trends, with the reports displaying a variety of information, including referral sources and type of attendance. With this information to hand, the NHS is able to see where major costs are being incurred and take action to make services more efficient without compromising care.
Tagged: Ardentia, Business Intelligence, Core Activity Reporting, costs for each patient, NHS, NHS Trusts, Nuffield Trust
With the NHS being told it has to save huge amounts of efficiency savings within the next five years, Ardentia has announced the launch of CassiusVision – the latest version of its web-based reporting tool used by more than 80 NHS Trusts and Boards.
The business intelligence solution will provide the NHS with improved flexibility and navigation to identify key areas for efficiency savings. CassiusVision will continue to provide all of the existing benefits of Cassius to users, but has the advantage of new and improved usability and functionality to help the NHS effectively manage and implement the necessary changes required by the latest Government announcements on efficiency savings.
David Beeson, Development Director at Ardentia, says: “Cassius is an integral part of all of our business intelligence solutions, acting as the backbone for the analysis and review of data by NHS organisations. We have taken time to ensure that CassiusVision offers significant improvements to users to assist Trusts in a particularly challenging climate.
“The software will provide managers and clinicians the opportunity to glean key findings in a matter of minutes, which will be essential in making the all important decisions on financial and operational matters to meet the required efficiency savings.”
The Cassius software provides a secure platform to manage, create and distribute reports to authorized users. The software has been designed to help deliver measurable differences to the management of all business intelligence reporting. This in turn makes for easier analysis and helps ensure budgets are being used in the best manner possible. Allowing clinicians and managers to also use Cassius to carry out complex analysis of business intelligence data and highlight specific aspects of reports for easy comparison and discussion.
For more information on CassiusVision call Ardentia on 0844 8481205 or email Martin at martin.brammah@ardetia.co.uk.
Tagged: Ardentia, Business Intelligence, Cassius Vision, efficiency savings, NHS Trusts
The BBC has reported that the British Medical Association’s chairman, Dr Hamish Meldrum, has revealed his concern at the way doctors are having no input into how NHS cuts are being made. He highlighted that the cuts were being introduced in a ‘haphazard’ way, which could lead to a decline in patient care.
Another area highlighted by Dr Meldrum was how cuts in administration would still affect front line care as doctors and nurses often had to pick up this work. This is where we have to be looking to make changes. Technology can play an important role in streamlining administrative processes and ensuring that patient’s details not only stay secure, but that patients’ treatments can be monitored and progressed appropriately, within the required timescales.
While the NHS is one of the few areas of public spending which will not see its budget slashed within the next five years, the health service is being told to make efficiency savings as a result of the increase in pressure on funding and in order to do this effectively, we need to be looking at how we can improve existing procedures, so that we remove waste and do not compromise the level of care.
Ardentia’s Service Line Reporting enables trusts to effectively manage their own performance; in particular it shows which areas need the most attention to improve overall efficiency, and more importantly, the quality of care. The business intelligence solution also highlights the areas that most need attention, including those that may need additional resource to ensure continuity of care or those which give the most cause for concern.
Business intelligence solutions can offer rewards to clinicians, doctors and nurses by monitoring how redundancies and budget restraints are impacting the frontline services and, ultimately, the patients.
Tagged: Ardentia, BMA, British Me, Business Intelligence, NHS, patient care, quality of care, service line reporting
As well as NHS management costs being cut, Health Secretary Andrew Lansley has revealed that the Government is ending patients’ rights to see a family doctor within 48 hours and scrapping the 18-week target from hospital referral to the start of treatment.
The BBC reported that patients in England will no longer be guaranteed a GP appointment within 48 hours, instead doctors will be allowed to prioritise patients according to how urgent they believe their needs to be. This move should hopefully allow those with the most serious medical conditions to be guaranteed treatment sooner, as previously the 48-hour target ran the risk of seeing these patients having to wait longer for treatment because appointments had already been filled in a bid to meet the two day deadline.
Despite the scrapping of the 18 week referral, the Government has made it clear hospitals will still be expected to see patients in 18 weeks, but they will not have to prove it to local managers. This is aimed at reducing the administration time and cutting unnecessary paperwork; freeing up more time for patient care, which supports the Government’s proposed plan of moving away from targets and towards patient outcomes.
These new measures do indeed sound promising for patient care, but there are fears that it will now be difficult to measure treatment as there is no alternative recording system being put in place. The NHS will still need to pay close attention to these issues and Ardentia’s Service Line Reporting solution can help with such matters. The software reveals the areas in most need of attention; those areas that may need additional resource to ensure continuity of care, or which give the most cause for concern – factors that will be vital to consider to maintain a high standard of patient care.
Tagged: 18-week, Andrew Lansley, Ardentia, health secretary, hospitals, NHS, patient care, Service Li
The NHS has been told it needs to save £222m of management costs this year, with Health Secretary Andrew Lansley revealing the NHS must cut its management costs by 46% by 2014. Reporting on the news, E-Health Insider highlights how management costs now stand at £1.85 billion and must be reduced by £850m.
Andrew Lansley Health Secretary said: “NHS spending will increase, but so too will demand on NHS services. In order to meet this demand, the NHS needs to make substantial savings and that is why I want to see immediate action this year to reduce management costs so that the savings made can be reinvested in NHS care for patients.”
The BBC reported in March that the number of managers in the NHS in England had risen to almost 45,000, which demonstrated how management were being recruited at five times the rate of qualified nurses.
To ensure that patient care does not decline following on from this announcement, health providers need to look at ways to reduce costs throughout the NHS; identifying where there is waste to be cut.
In order to locate these areas of inefficiency, managers need to have access to details of all procedures, along with their costings and allocations of time. Business intelligence can provide this. Ardentia’s Patient Level Costing software allows users to review exactly how much the treatment of any one patient costs, drilling right down to the minutes spent in surgery or with a specialist clinician. Such data as this will be critical to ensuring the NHS is able to cut costs without cutting the quality of care delivered to patients.
Tagged: Andrew Lansley, Ardentia, Business Intelligence, health secretary, NHS, NHS spending, patient care, patient level costing
Last week the Health IT Minister announced the continuation of the Summary Care Records. Smart Healthcare this week reported that Simon Burns told the British Medical Association (BMA) in a letter that SCR is under review with a ‘focus on ownership of the information’.
The Summary Care Records have come under intense criticism by many and the majority agree that the main problem of the records is in fact the way the programme was implemented rather than the online records themselves. Ultimately Mr Burns feels that the success of the Summary Care Records relies on the patients and the doctors and how they perceive the records, this can be acheived by making the process transparent for both parties.
The Summary Care Records are a central part of one of the most controversial elements of the NPfIT, the biggest healthcare IT programme in the world. To make the records a success all stakeholders must be informed of how the records will work, how patients can opt out of the records and the timeline of the roll out as these are the key issues many are concerned about. In order for the records to surpass expectations these key issues must be resolved, this should eventually result in the online records improving the quality and safety of treatment provided by hospital staff and out-of-hours doctors by giving them as much information to improve overall patient care.
Tagged: British Medical Association, Health IT Minister, National Programme for IT, NPfIT, patient care, Summary Care Records
The recent investigation by The Guardian newspaper into death rates from vascular surgery revealed a huge variation in death rates among patients admitted for planned operations.
The Guardian’s report shows how comparing identical areas of activity between hospitals can reveal critical information. Only detailed information on specific hospital procedures can reveal areas where more effective care can be delivered to patients, or savings made. Collecting and analysing accurate patient-level data on outcomes will be key to improving care and efficiency in hospital trusts.
By gathering more data on treatments and outcomes at an identifiable patient level, it’s possible to uncover the exact reasons for the differences in mortality rates. These may include factors beyond the hospital’s control, such as the presence of other underlying conditions or the typical age of patients treated. So accurate, patient-level information and costings is crucial to revealing these factors and showing where treatment can be improved, and efficiencies gained in individual hospitals.
As the leading supplier of business intelligence tools to the NHS, Ardentia has developed a Patient Level Costing solution that is already in use in a number of NHS trusts. The solution enables trusts to accurately measure their performance at individual patient level, including all contributing factors to treatment costs from the number of minutes in theatre to the total amount of bed days and nursing hours required. This identifies the reasons for any excursions from averages and NHS tariffs, helping to improve efficiency and ensure that patients receive the highest quality of care.
Tagged: Ardentia, Business Intelligence, death rates, hospitals, NHS, patient level costing, Patients, quality of care
According to a report in The Guardian, Health Secretary Andrew Lansley is planning to do away with the four-hour waiting targets for Accident and Emergency departments throughout the NHS to instead focus on “best possible results for patients”.
While some will argue that the A&E waiting targets create pressure on staff to focus on targets rather than patient care, there have also been significant improvements since the waiting targets have been in place, with all patients receiving medical attention, not just some.
However, it is hoped that eliminating the pressure on staff to meet the waiting targets will benefit the NHS, hopefully preventing decisions being made that compromise care in order to meet these deadlines. There does though, need to be some level of monitoring in place to avoid instances of patients waiting countless hours for treatment.
Business intelligence solutions such as Ardentia’s Core Activity Reporting enable the analysis of A&E attendances and trends, including waiting times. This technology allows NHS Trusts to monitor waiting times without placing added demands on staff, instead creating a focus on an improvement of overall patient care.
Tagged: accident and emergency, Andrew Lansley, Ardentia, Business Intelligence, Core Activity Reporting, health secretary, NHS, patient care, waiting targets
The Health Secretary Andrew Lansley has announced new plans to penalise hospitals financially for discharging patients too soon, if the patients are then readmitted within 30 days.
Tracking patients is extremely important for both patients’ interests and for the NHS, as there are substantial readmittance costs incurred for emergency treatment of any patient. To help, there are many intelligent solutions that allow hospitals to build and track the progress of patients from referral to treatment. Ardentia’s Pathway Manager, for example, enables healthcare managers to monitor progress along pathways on a daily basis, which offers detailed charting of a patient right from initial contact with a GP, though to acute or other hospital treatment and, if appropriate, back to the GP. If such changes as these are to be put in place then we need to be looking at how hospitals and GPs alike will be able to better monitor a patient’s progress to make sure that they are discharged at the time that is right for them.
However, the Guardian has reported how the British Medical Association council has stated that the risk to penalising hospitals financially will inevitably end up with doctors not discharging patients for fear of suffering the financial repercussions rather than what is necessarily best for patients. This obviously is a concern, as then we risk accumulating higher costs through funding hospital care for patients who do not require it.
Whether or not penalising financially is the right option going forward for the NHS, it is clear that better patient tracking is required that not only ensures that hospitals are run as cost-efficiently as possible, but more importantly, that patients’ needs are put first.
Tagged: Andrew Lansley, Ardentia, Britis, GP, health secretary, hospitals, Pathway Manager, Patients
