Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust, Hounslow and Richmond Community Healthcare NHS Trust and West London NHS Trust sought to standardise the way that they captured, stored and analysed their data.
Nigel Tazzyman, Director and Deputy Director of ICTWe needed a long-term, comprehensive plan for our approach to data. By avoiding sticky plaster solutions and instead taking baby steps of best practice, we are already seeing the benefits of our data standardisation programme across our trusts and the wider ICS. Channel 3 was instrumental in supporting our aspirations and, crucially, bringing along key stakeholders on the journey.
The trusts had previously moved to a new electronic patient record (EPR) system, which was a significant project in terms of time and resources. They engaged Channel 3 to discuss, plan and implement developments that would make the most of the data within the new EPR system.
The challenge: A data spring clean
Working with the trusts, we identified the following data-related challenges:
• Reporting and benchmarking were difficult for each trust as there were challenges around single views of data and various formats.
• Data collection inconsistencies meant that obsolete data existed in the system at a large scale. This impacted the performance of the system and impacted the user’s efficient use of the system.
• The existing performance and setup did not enable clinicians to use the system to its full potential.
Whilst the senior leadership and tech teams understood the benefits of improving data capture processes, it was essential that frontline staff were engaged and brought along on the journey.
In the eyes of frontline staff, they had a job to do, and they welcomed any developments that resolved laborious data processes.
The solution: How we cleaned up the data
Working with the trusts, Channel 3 set out to realise the full potential of the EPR system by conducting a full review of the data items within the system. Unused items were removed, duplicate entries were merged and national codes were allocated. The aim was to ensure that the data provided one version of the truth within the EPR.
To ensure that the frontline requirements were best served by the project, we also consulted with three core services: district nursing, rapid response and specialist nursing.
Our message to these teams was clear – let’s work together to free up more of your time to provide care to patients.
The results: The benefits of the data spring clean
• A tidy EPR system with improved data accuracy and speed of system use.
• Reduced time spent to input data by clinicians by reducing options in configuration lists, whilst maintaining high-quality data standards and essential insights.
• A tidy backend community services data standard (CSDS), with every item having a unique CSDS code to ensure one true version of events.
• Service improvements, automated processes and streamlined activities for clinicians. All of which reduced the administration burden.
