An online decision support system for 330 GP surgeries
across Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire is about to be
rolled out by the NHS’s South Central strategic health
authority.
The system is being installed to support practice-based
commissioning – a government policy aimed at shifting healthcare
commissioning decisions away from large, geographically based
primary care trusts and into the hands of local GP practices.
The online service, dubbed the Thames Valley Data Warehouse, is
designed to give existing NHS commissioners and GP practices
secure, unlimited access to patient-level data and reports through
a web browser.
The aim is to support decision-making under the new
practice-based commissioning regime and to help GP practices
develop their commissioning processes and manage budgets more
easily.
The system is built from the SQL Server-based Healthware
datawarehousing solution and a specialised reporting application,
both provided by healthcare business intelligence specialist
Ardentia. It will be hosted by the NHS’s Buckinghamshire Shared
Services organisation and is set to go live next month.
Data on more than 2.2 million patients will be uploaded into the
warehouse and updated monthly. The system will also show each GP
practice’s allocated commissioning budget against the amount spent,
providing an early warning of overspends and helping GPs plan
services.
NHS senior manager Malathi Reddy added, “The Thames Valley Data
Warehouse works hand in hand with emerging NHS Connecting for
Health systems, and fulfils the key CfH objective of enabling fast
access to patient data for clinicians and analysts.”
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