Ridgian have developed a best of breed Business Intelligence platform to deliver World Class Commissioning (WCC) to the CBSA based on the latest Microsoft technologies such as SQL Server Business Intelligence and SharePoint (MOSS).
Accurate and timely contract management information for both Practice-Based Commissioners and PCTs to manage secondary care contracts more effectively
Direct management support in negotiation and dealing with secondary care providers
Acute activity and spending by Practice to support PBC
"We have been very pleased with the way that Ridgian has helped us build and develop both our web based Business Intelligence and SharePoint Extranet solutions. The management and analysis of such a large amount of transactional data was always going to be challenging, but Ridgian’s focus on delivering solutions to business issues rather than just technology consulting proved to be just what we needed and we will be working together again on future projects" comments David Johnston, Head of CBSA Developments.
Why the CBSA selected Ridgian
Ridgian, the Information Management Experts were engaged by CBSA due to our strength in data management borne out of a 10 year background of delivering Analysis and Reporting to Financial Services organisation such as Barclays bank. Our ability to understand data sources and very quickly turn this into meaningful decision making capability was a key factor. The depth and breadth of our knowledge and experience also played a part given that the CBSA solution encompasses a number of Microsoft technologies in the Business Productivity area.
The Solution The CBSA Business Intelligence solution uses Secondary Uses Service (SUS) data jointly delivered by The NHS Information Centre and NHS Connecting for Health. The data contains a record for every contact between any patient in the UK and a hospital in the West Midlands or Surrey, and also for any West Midlands or Surrey-based patient to any hospital in the UK, including Inpatients, Outpatients and Accident & Emergency.
For 21 months of processing, this equates to over
40 million records. Each of these contact records must be processed, categorised and costed according to National Tariff rules.
Web-based Reports are delivered through SharePoint, aggregated up to Primary Care Trust level. The reports must match the individual contact record costs against the appropriate budget and highlight variances. The reports must allow dynamic slicing of data by factors such as time, category of care (HRG, Specialty), Trust (Hospital), Patient characteristics (Age Band, Gender, Ethnicity) within the browser to thousands of users, whilst keeping response times below 5 seconds. Drill downs are required from the highest level of aggregation through various sub-levels, all the way down to the level of individual patient contact records. All users are restricted to data specific to their own business unit – in particular, access to patient level data is tightly restricted.
A Business Intelligence Intranet based around SharePoint was designed to deliver the following:
A single point of contact for all defined users to obtain business and operational information from the CBSA and about NHS world class commissioning.
A single point of access to a standard UK wide suite of Business Intelligence and Commissioning applications built around the needs of commissioners including contract performance for PCT and Practice Based Commissioners. This includes tools such as risk stratification, planning, forecasting and process monitoring tools to assist commissioners to improve and shape services to meet the needs of their populations.
A single point of entry to a document repository, containing reports from commissioning improvement projects, commissioning policy documentation and business process documentation to support all of the CBSA's business activities. All documents in the portal have document control information such as date modified, modified by etc. and are managed according to a records policy (File Plan) that controls their lifespan.
Improved communications between CBSA internal teams and combined PCT/Trust/CBSA teams by providing discussion groups, moderatedwhere appropriate.
Controlled access to all the data resources and applications that it contains.
Supports NHS compliance and information governance requirements.