Business intelligence and analytics solution deployed at Ipswich Hospital
MedeAnalytics\' FT Navigator to improve commissioning and monitor activity and financial performance
The potential of patient data to help shape and improve healthcare services is being recognised as part of a partnership between The Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust and supplier, MedeAnalytics.
The trust has introduced MedeAnalytics’ FT Navigator business intelligence and analytics solution to analyse quality, activity and financial performance metrics and facilitate more informed negotiations with commissioners.
The solution is also enabling the trust to view key performance indicators, updated on a day-to-day basis so it can identify and examine areas of concern or interest more quickly and effectively.
The Ipswich Hospital has 500 beds and serves a population of more than 356,000 people, providing emergency care, planned care and maternity and children’s services as well as a range of specialist clinical services, including being one of only two hospitals in the UK providing pioneering radiotherapy treatment.
MedeAnalytics is strengthening our commissioning discussion with our commissioners and ensures that we are fully informed
Michael Meers, chief information officer at Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust, said: “Prior to implementing MedeAnalytics we were using a content management system to collate all the data across the various services we provide. To analyse and report on that data, we had to undertake a manual process to take it out of the CMS and input it to a series of Excel spreadsheets.
“MedeAnalytics provided the opportunity to move away from spreadsheet-based reporting to a web-based platform that was more flexible, easier to use and had more scope for expansion.”
FT Navigator provides a suite of performance management modules that monitor key performance indicators across the organisation and drill down from a summary of the data to individual patient records within a couple of clicks. The trust has already used it to focus on reducing its number of Did-Not-Attends and has introduced a trial free appointment reminder service in the areas of ophthalmology, diabetes and musculoskeletal physiotherapy.
Meers said: “MedeAnalytics has enabled us to see on a week-by-week basis the exact results and benefits that we have realised from the reminder service. We could see that the number of missed appointments dropped from 11% to 5% in these clinics in December alone and have therefore introduced the reminder service to our rheumatology, endoscopy, respiratory, endocrine and hand therapy clinics before we roll it out across the hospital.”
We now have the tools available to be able to look at our performance in much more detail and much quicker than before
In addition, the insight the trust is gaining from this real-time data is enabling it to have more informed negotiations with the local primary care trust when commissioning future services.
Meers said: “We can now discuss various quality and activity metrics. Also, because MedeAnalytics is a hosted solution, we have secure, remote access to the reports that show how the trust is performing. We can assess the level of risk that we might be under by agreeing a particular threshold or penalty within a contract. MedeAnalytics is strengthening our commissioning discussion with our commissioners and ensures that we are fully informed.”
Looking ahead, one of the long-term benefits of the solution will be that Ipswich Hospital will have a single informatics system for consultants, finance directors and general managers, whether they are analysing theatre data, HR data, nursing quality performance metrics or the trust’s overall financial performance. MedeAnalytics is also providing a future-proof solution that will support the trust’s reporting requirements in the changing NHS landscape.
Meers said: “We will have a number of clinical commissioning groups in the area so our reporting requirements will be increasing significantly. With MedeAnalytics, we can drill down into the data required very quickly so we can provide the exact reports necessary with just a few clicks of a button.
“We now have the tools available to be able to look at our performance in much more detail and much quicker than before. Our team of analysts is now free to analyse the data instead of creating it which, ultimately, will help us achieve our vision of becoming a foundation trust and provide nationally-recognised, safe, reliable, personal and responsive care to our patients.”