South Tyneside NHS Foundation Trust has implemented a
business intelligence system to improve its monitoring of
performance levels and ensure future funding.
Hospital funding has begun moving to a scheme called Payment By
Results, under which the government pays per procedure rather than
basing funding on service levels.
South Tyneside said its business intelligence roll-out should
ensure that it is properly funded when the payments scheme goes
live in April 2007.
Martin Alexander, head of IS at the trust, said, “Information
governance is really important so that we can claim the correct
income. Previously we had a relatively guaranteed income; now it is
relatively uncertain.”
Using Cognos tools, hospital business analysts can draw
information from the Oracle-based patient administration system and
Excel spreadsheets into “data cubes”, which can be manipulated and
visualised in various ways to assess the hospital’s
performance.
Understanding how the hospital is performing is essential for
allocating medical resources efficiently and keeping waiting lists
down, Alexander said. “With the agenda for patient choice, it is
really important how long your waiting lists are from day to day.
At our trust, no one waits for more than 13 weeks. We have a target
of getting that down to eight weeks,” he said.
In addition, because the Cognos reports can be distributed via
the web, staff can get hold of them more easily, Alexander
said.