Case study: How streamlined reporting and modern IT can drive better health outcomes

Published: 24-Oct-2019

Andy Baldin, vice president for EMEA at Ivanti, explores how NHS Arden and the Greater East Midlands Commissioning Support Unit (GEM CSU) addressed its most-pressing IT challenges and enabled healthcare clients to deliver better care for their patients

The healthcare industry presents unique digital complexities when it comes to staff workflows and accessing patient data.

And IT has become a core part of healthcare organisations’ processes.

When leveraged effectively, it can enable health professionals and organisations to provide optimal and integrated patient care.

When people’s wellbeing is at stake, time is of the essence.

Therefore, implementing technology which enables automation and prioritisation is vital – and simplifying back-end processes is crucial in order to prevent IT issues from impacting patient outcomes.

Outstanding IT support for health organisations is only possible when all behind-the scenes processes are optimised while making the best use of time and resources

The recent shift in focus on technology and digital experiences has led to a demand for cohesive user journeys across multiple devices.

People now want to access healthcare services from their mobiles with the same ease as they would enjoy on their desktop computers.

This, and other factors, are enticing IT support providers who work with healthcare organisations to step up their game.

A great example of an organisation which is renovating its processes to this end is NHS Arden & Greater East Midlands Commissioning Support Unit (Arden & GEM).

The company provides end-to-end support services to healthcare organisations and boasts a plethora of customers based across a vast portion of the UK – from Manchester to Southend – including more than 60 clinical commissioning groups (CCGs), NHS England, sustainability transformation partnerships, local authorities, and a range of care providers located in the UK.

It works with a diverse range of partners to exceed ambitious service level agreements (SLAs) and help its healthcare customers deliver outstanding care for their patients.

An IT revamp

Outstanding IT support for health organisations is only possible when all behind-the scenes processes are optimised while making the best use of time and resources.

Arden & GEM’s performance analysis activities were standing in the way of this approach.

Its teams were creating reports manually, utilising spreadsheets – a procedure which sometimes took days.

But implementing Ivanti’s Xtraction made an incommensurable difference.

Optimised IT processes lead to more-effective support, timely resolution of issues, and improved performance

The new solution only requires staff to set a report up once, after which it merely needs to be refreshed to generate the updated version – completing this in near-real time.

For more-complex analyses, Xtraction takes a maximum of two hours to produce an indepth internal or client report.

It’s clear that this has revolutionised the way the Arden & GEM team works.

Reporting overhead was reduced by 60%, allowing staff to focus on more-value-added tasks, such as investigating incident trends and brainstorming ideas on how to enhance the service provided.

Efficiency levels naturally skyrocketed and performance against service level agreements was significantly improved.

A matter of speed

Getting an immediate overview of IT service delivery has allowed the company to forecast which problems may arise and solve them faster.

And the team is now able to manage requests in a more-efficient manner, prioritising more critical queries.

As a result, Arden & GEM’s customers are able to provide better patient care due to their IT difficulties being promptly addressed and resolved.

Deep learning

While speed is of the essence, healthcare organisations also need intelligent IT support based on indepth performance analysis.

Aside from drastically cutting down reporting time, Xtraction empowers individuals to create much-richer reports that drill deeper into the data, creating the basis for an open dialogue between Arden & GEM and the healthcare providers it supports about how to advance their performance.

Today’s patients demand connected and streamlined services, so health organisations looking to provide better patient care must take a more digital approach and implement the right technology to enable this

Examining and learning from previous issues means they can now identify areas of improvement, comparing them with examples of excellent behaviour to recreate.

All in all, optimised IT processes lead to more-effective support, timely resolution of issues, and improved performance.

Today’s patients demand connected and streamlined services, so health organisations looking to provide better patient care must take a more digital approach and implement the right technology to enable this.

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