Outpatient Attendance Rates Found to Vary Significantly

Debbie Williams

Blog, Thursday 6th January 2011

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An article published on Health Service Journal has outlined how outpatient attendance rates vary significantly between Trusts and regions.

Of the 147 Trusts analysed between September 2008 and August 2010, 30 had attendance rates below 70%, 28 between 70% and 79%, 37 between 80% and 89% and 52 above 90%.

The Royal Free Hampstead and Barts and the London Trusts were shown to have the worst attendance rates at 60 and 62%. In contrast, Plymouth Hospitals Trust had one of the highest attendance rates at 94%, with just 62 cancellations out of more than a million appointments recorded during the period.

Among patients in their 20s, for every seven appointments attended one patient failed to turn up. According to the statistics, men failed to attend 3.1 million appointments – equivalent to nearly 9% of their total appointments – while women missed 7.3%.

Poor outpatient attendance is undoubtedly costly for Trusts, which is why managers and clinicians need to be aware of these problem areas and find ways to improve the situation.

Ardentia’s Activity Flow Analytics offers a solution that can provide information on outpatient attendance, enabling clinicians and managers to identify trends in Did Not Attend (DNA) rates. By drilling down further into the location of these patients and their treatment requirements, Trusts will be able to make a more informed decision on how best to tackle the issue of poor outpatient attendance and collaborate with GPs to ensure NHS resources are being used as efficiently as possible.

You can read the full article on HSJ.

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Health Boards Urged to Accurately Compare Costs

Debbie Williams

Blog, Wednesday 17th November 2010

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A report has concluded that health boards should improve the way they compare costs to tackle budget constraints.

According to the Press Association, Holyrood’s Public Audit Committee has asked the Scottish Government to explain how it will address the issue, following an investigation into orthopaedic services.

MSPs investigated the service after a report from public spending watchdog Audit Scotland found the NHS could save about £2 million a year if boards stopped purchasing hip and knee joints from different suppliers.

The committee also urged the Government to improve the quality of data collection and investigate why orthopaedic cases increased by only 12% despite a rise in funding and a 49% increase in consultant numbers.

Committee convener Hugh Henry said: “NHS boards did not appear to be able to accurately compare their costs and productivity with other NHS boards to identify how savings and efficiencies could be realised – this information is vital given future budget constraints.”

At Ardentia, we also believe that having access to high quality financial data is vital to enable managers to make informed business decisions. With Business Intelligence tools, managers and clinicians can drill down into the costs associated with each treatment, ensuring inefficiencies are driven out in the right places to improve care delivery and patient experience.

It’s only by having this level of detail that Trusts can deliver the level of savings proposed by the Government while ensuring care does not suffer as a result.

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Ardentia Helps Trusts Pseudonymise Data and Meet National Requirements With New Solution

Debbie Williams

Blog, Friday 29th October 2010

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With all NHS Commissioners and providers of NHS commissioned care required to complete the implementation of pseudonymisation by March 2011, Ardentia has introduced a new solution to help Trusts meet these guidelines and avoid ICO penalties.

The pseudonymisation tool generates pseudonyms to remove key identifiers that may associate a treatment pathway with a particular individual, enabling Trusts to carry out secondary use of patient data in a legal, safe and secure manner.

The tool easily integrates with Ardentia’s data warehouse as well as other Microsoft SQL data warehouses, meaning it can be used by a majority of Trusts to help implement the necessary changes and meet the requirements set by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). In addition, Trusts can use the tool without having to purchase other Ardentia solutions.

Read the full article on eHealth News to find out more about our pseudonymisation solution.

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Ardentia Updates Theatre Performance Module

Debbie Williams

Blog, Friday 24th September 2010

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With operating theatres becoming a major cost element in the delivery of acute care and average running costs estimated at £4000 per session, Ardentia has introduced an updated version of its Theatre Performance Module.

The solution gives NHS managers and clinicians a powerful and flexible means of monitoring and reporting on operating theatre sessions, enabling them to identify specific areas where efficiency can be improved and theatre resources maximised.

A 2010 study by the NHS Confederation showed that typically only 47% of active theatre hours constituted actual procedure time, with late starts, early finishes and turnaround time accounting for over a third (34%) of the total used time in operating theatres.

Ardentia’s Theatre Performance Module is designed to help managers and clinicians better manage operating theatre utilisation, and identify specific areas for improving efficiency and patient care.

The solution is built on Ardentia’s proven HealthWare performance management solution and allows staff to access the high quality data needed to support robust financial planning and management.

You can read about Ardentia’s updated Theatre Performance Module on eHealth News.

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Collaboration Key to Maintain High Quality Care

Debbie Williams

Blog, Monday 13th September 2010

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A report by independent health charity the Nuffield Trust has underlined the importance of collaboration as well as competition among health and social care providers, in order to ensure patients receive high quality care that is responsive to their needs.

The report, ‘Removing the policy barriers to integrated care in England’, referred to in an article on The British Journal of Healthcare Computing and Information Management, examines five areas in England where local clinicians and managers are already working together to break down the barriers between different health professionals and services.

As well as exploring the five case studies, the report underlines seven key policy barriers the Government needs to address to enable health and social care providers to deliver successful integrated care for patients at a reasonable cost.

However, according to Dr Judith Smith, Nuffield Trust Head of Policy and co-author of the report, the Government still has “tough choices” ahead if it is to deliver the efficiency gains in the NHS that are needed.

She said: “Short-term savings can be made but the extent of the productivity gains that are required mean that we have to do things fundamentally differently in the NHS.

“While the evidence base is still mixed, encouraging integration between providers of care is the most rational way forward to reduce fragmented care, the avoidable ill health it produces, and to improve efficiency.”

In order for healthcare providers to make these efficiency gains, they need to be able to access high quality data to identify exactly where savings can be made, without affecting care. Business intelligence solutions like Ardentia’s Patient Level Costing can provide this, allowing managers to review the treatment costs of each patient, including the minutes spent in surgery or with a clinician.

This financial clarity allows Trusts to generate long-term savings by cutting waste, not care.

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Referral Management Centres Not Delivering Savings

Debbie Williams

Blog, Monday 23rd August 2010

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It has been claimed that referral management centres are not an effective way to provide savings and that Trusts would be able to better manage budgets through having more information to hand about referrals, according to a report by the King’s Fund featured on E Health Insider Primary Care.

It was even claimed that quite the opposite of being a beneficial resource, referral management centres could actually increase costs to the NHS, with referrals being misdirected or delayed. Guaranteeing a constant flow of GP referrals across services is vital to Trusts and so having the necessary information to hand on where GP practices are sending patients is of key importance. 

Ardentia’s Activity Flow Analytics allows hospitals to not only access information on precisely where their own referrals are coming from – using Microsoft’s Virtual Earth technology to display these on an easily accessible map, but it also allows them to see where those referrals they miss out on are being sent instead.

This information can be broken down into treatment type, age, gender and location, so Trusts are able to use their resources to the best of their ability to target the areas that offer them the most potential. For example, Activity Flow Analytics may demonstrate that a particular geographic area is sending the vast majority of patients elsewhere or perhaps pathology cases are not as high as other specialties, whatever the data shows, having this level of detail readily accessible allows Trusts to drill down into the findings to look at how they can best target GP practices to increase their referral rates.

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Insight into Referral Rates Allows Trusts to Maximise Incomes

Debbie Williams

Blog, Tuesday 10th August 2010

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With the budget cuts imposed on the NHS, trusts are facing the difficult challenge of making savings without job losses, while also ensuring that there is no adverse effect on overall patient experience. Trusts’ top leaders are being forced to scrutinize financial costs down to the smallest details, analysing every operating framework to see where improvements can be made to help make the outlined efficiency savings.

However, in addition to re-evaluating current procedures and driving for maximum efficiency, what other ways are there for trusts to improve revenues? One answer Ardentia offers is Activity Flow Analytics.

Activity Flow Analytics works alongside Microsoft’s Virtual Earth technology to show precisely where each referral comes from, as well as showing all other locations for GP referrals. Drop-down menus allow managers to drill down through a range of selectors including speciality, HRG, location, age or gender, meaning trusts can understand how referral flow and market share change according to the kind of case involved. Historical data can also be accessed to assess whether referral rates have increased or decreased, and to help identify the cause for any change.

Having access to this information allows trusts to identify where they are performing strongly and where they are losing out on referrals. Once these areas have been pinpointed, trusts can work to concentrate efforts on improving the volume of referrals handled to ensure that these are bringing in as higher revenue as possible to assist with meeting NHS budget cuts.

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Nurses To Recognise Poor Patient Care

Debbie Williams

Blog, Tuesday 27th July 2010

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The Telegraph has reported that nurses are to be reminded of duties that must be carried out in order to provide the highest standard of care and improve overall patient experience.

According to a report released by the National Health Service, a high number of patients have been found to suffer from malnutrition or falls when in hospital, with 70% of those experiencing malnutrition not having this recognised by nurses. The number of patient falls on NHS grounds has been stated as over 200,000 and in addition, 10% of patients in hospital suffered from bed sores.

The report calls for these issues to be recognised and addressed, with nurses central to resolving these issues. Chief Executive of the Royal College of Nursing, Dr Peter Carter, said: “Nurses need the resources to be able to do their jobs well including the right balance and mix of staff in the hospital and the community.”

The emphasis on “quality care” highlighted in the Darzi report has increased alongside the mounted pressure on Trusts as they attempt to make the large amounts of efficiency savings. To ensure that nurses have the correct resources to be able to provide the highest standard of care, business intelligence solutions such as Ardentia’s Service Line Reporting can be put in place to allow nurses to monitor their own performances. The solution helps managers and staff to make improvements to the service they offer by providing Service Lines with the information they need to manage their own performance successfully.

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Will You Be Managing Your Health Online?

Debbie Williams

Blog, Wednesday 6th January 2010

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E Health Insider has reported on Conservative party plans to introduce online health records if it wins this year’s election.

David Cameron has promised that online health records will underpin a new direction for the NHS, saying that: “It’s the patient who’ll have the power in our NHS. You’ll be able to check your health records online in the same way you do your bank account.  We will put patients in charge of their own health records, with the ability to choose which providers they share them with.”

The Tories would make available detailed data about the performance of trusts, hospitals, GPs, doctors and other staff available to the public online so everyone will know who is providing a good service and who is falling behind.

Cameron added: “You’ll have information about how good different doctors are, how good different hospitals are, information about the things that really matter, like cancer survival rates, the rate of hospital infections, your chance of going home to live independently if you have a stroke.”

Providing data of this nature will in theory enable patients to make informed choices about the care they receive, but for such plans to be realisable, we are going to need better quality healthcare data, and a lot more of it.

Business Intelligence solutions are key to making this happen.  Trusts across the country are already using business intelligence to improve data quality and reporting requirements, which in turn is helping to reduce waiting times, ensure timely access to care, and support improve and robust financial management.

If the Tories’ manifesto is to be achieved, then we will need to have such data uniformly and consistently available on a national level, in order to ensure accurate and meaningful comparison.  Online health records would undoubtedly help to ensure a more patient-centric NHS, but there is a lot of work to be done, if such ambitious plans are to be realised.

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Looking for the Perfect "NP" Fit

Debbie Williams

Blog, Tuesday 15th December 2009

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Health secretary Andy Burnham has defended the NHS’ National Programme for IT (NPfIT) in the House of Commons following comments made by Chancellor Alastair Darling that NPfIT was “not essential to the frontline” and that it might be something “we do not need to go ahead with right now.”  However, Burnham said the programme had delivered significant benefits that were recognised by clinicians and that it was key part of the modernisation of the NHS.

The NPfIT has been a subject of great debate and there are arguments to support both sides. If we take a look at what the NPfIT has  achieved so far, it is in-fact a significant amount. It has delivered greater interoperability  across the 330 NHS Trusts and hundreds of hospitals and clinics, with four of the five key systems already in place, progressing well, and completed ahead of time.  Choose and Book, the electronic transfer of prescriptions, broadband networking and x-ray archiving are already delivering benefits to patients and staff.

Giving individual trusts more autonomy and the flexibility to deploy the right tools for the job could help deliver even more progress. Imposing IT systems on Trusts may not be the most productive course of action.  Instead, giving healthcare staff and Trusts the flexibility and choice to choose the systems that best meet their needs would be a better approach.

Using smaller suppliers, who can develop bespoke solutions to accurately meet the unique needs of each individual organisation, and who work with them on a consultative basis to implement the solutions, may be better at delivering the results staff and Trusts are looking for.  After all everyone knows, there’s no such thing as one size fits all!

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