Measuring, assessing and reporting on NHS Trusts and other healthcare systems

The National Health Service is one of the largest public services and among the most complex to manage. In this environment, the improved management, exploitation and communication of information is key to enhancing management and clinical decision-making. Hence the pivotal role of IT in implementing Performance Assessment Frameworks (PAFs) that are designed to enhance quality of service and clinical outcomes, improve visibility and accountability, and provide better financial management.

PAFs are designed to enable continuous improvements in essential areas such as:

• health improvement and reducing inequalities
• clinical governance, quality and effectiveness of healthcare
• the patient’s experience
• staff governance
• organisational and financial performance and efficiency.

SAS Solutions for Healthcare

An Intelligence Framework strategy, delivered using SAS and including disciplines such as the balanced scorecard, draws together disparate NHS and non-NHS systems and data sources, and provides powerful analytical and reporting tools to support performance management at multiple levels. For example:

• operational managers can explore waiting status, examine workload by specialty, highlight patients by category, forecast patient throughput, and make better decisions on resource allocation covering issues like bed management;
• clinicians have a better understanding of their own performance and that of particular specialties; and
• managers and senior executives have greater support in strategic planning through analyses of historical trends and current activity, in areas ranging from funds allocation and reducing waiting times to implementing policy changes effectively and making appropriate contingency plans.

In short, SAS can help deliver an aggregate picture of the performance of NHS Trusts and any other NHS system.

NHS Performance Management

NHS Trusts sometimes operate 30 or more IT systems — including laboratory and Patient Administration Systems, systems for specialties like surgery, radiology, orthopaedics and pharmacy, and business systems for finance, HR, payroll and more. Linking these together, and subjecting all data to the same high levels of analysis and reporting, can be hugely valuable to service planning and delivery.

The SAS Intelligence Architecture

SAS-based solutions — delivering a consistent and fully integrated Intelligence Framework for NHS Trusts — enable organisations to:

• access and integrate data from disparate sources and systems — a central data repository uses cleaning, transformation and management tools to provide a single source of validated data;
• handle large data volumes and ensure scalability for growing volumes without affecting speed, performance or availability
• benefit from analytical rigour plus a range of reporting tools, enabling users to investigate issues and analyse underlying trends;
• deliver built-in flexibility and intuitive capabilities to handle large numbers of automated reports and ad hoc requests — individuals work more effectively while IS departments are freed to concentrate on more strategic activities; and
• ensure availability and accessibility across the organisation — web-based access is the obvious solution, while high levels of security maintain confidentiality.

This low risk approach turns operational data into information, and information into insights. Critically, business intelligence enables ‘information consumers’ at any level to explore and understand enriched information, giving them the context they need to make better decisions. At the same time, ready-made solutions speed up deployment in targeted areas, gradually providing a complete framework for enterprise performance management in the NHS.

Building a more intelligent enterprise

The SAS Intelligence Layer, including specific solutions like balanced scorecard, provides a solid strategy that enables NHS organisations to:

• establish and communicate a shared vision based on a Performance Assessment Framework (PAF) or any other management requirement;
• achieve both tactical short-term and strategic long-term goals;
• align, track and measure performance covering multiple activities and across multiple dimensions;
• constantly monitor and report on the ‘health’ of the organisation itself;
• deploy resources more effectively, including financial and human resources.

SAS recommends an iterative approach to developing an Intelligence Framework for NHS performance management. An important element is building on existing technology investments to deliver benefits early on, as organisations work towards creating the optimum platform for sustained performance improvements.