Leeds PCT invest in PBC monitoring software

Leeds Primary Care Trust has invested in new software to make data collation for practice based commissioning and performance management easier and clearer for its services to understand.

Leeds PCT is one of the largest PCTs in the country, with an annual budget of more than £1bn.

The trust have chose Performancesoft Views, specialist software designed to collate reports and present results in a clear and meaningful way for the end user. The package is being configured for Leeds PCT by the performance management software specialists Actuate.

Senior information manager at the trust, Chris Cooper, told EHI Primary Care: “The main driver for us choosing this system is to provide a solution which presents web-based reporting to all practices to enable them to get the real information and knowledge that they need for practice based commissioning.”

Under Practice Based Commissioning (PBC) PCTs are provided with responsibility for commissioning health services on behalf of their local population, ensuring they get the maximum benefit from limited budgets.

The aim of the scheme is for every practice in England to be involved in PBC by 2008.

Leeds PCT says it works closely with GP practices, pharmacists, optometrists, dentists, hospital trusts, social services, mental health services and community and voluntary organisations to commission and fund the healthcare they provide to people in Leeds.

Cooper said: “The PCT is actively encouraging PBC and in order for us to fully engage in this then having a good performance management system is paramount. In order to do this the local PBC forum issued a mandate to start a project to look for a new system to achieve this.

“We did pilot our own home-grown web-based reporting system, but feedback we received told us that there wasn’t enough information collected on the system in a meaningful way that could help us achieve the aims of PBC that the DH have mandated.”

The system has already been successfully deployed in Sunderland PCT, a version of which was demonstrated to Cooper and the Leeds PCT team.

“From what we have seen, Performancesoft Views offers us the perfect application that offers us the ability to collect, see, understand and act upon the data we generate and collect in a strategic way. We knew that to develop effective PBC this application would need to be used by every one of our 115 primary care practices, so the solution also had to have a highly visual, easy to use interface. It has definitely caught the eyes of our GPs,” said Cooper.

The trust will meet this week to agree an implementation strategy for the new system.

Once designed and tested, it is anticipated deployment will take eight weeks to be installed in all 115 locations across the PCT.

Cooper said: “The best thing about this software is it will enable all settings to gather information which is required by the Department of Health for them to prove they are achieving universal coverage. It will focus on important data including inpatient spells, outpatient and A&E attendances and pathology tests.

“It will deliver a system that is aimed at making sure people have the information they require and know what they are doing. This will in turn, enable them to monitor performance management and monitor what is effective commissioning and what is underachieving.”

Steve Fluin, vice president of the performance management division at Actuate, said: “We work closely with the UK public sector and NHS organisations including strategic health authorities and primary care trusts, and believe there is a pressing need within UK NHS organisations for a comprehensive yet flexible Performance Management system that can deliver visual and actionable information in a management-friendly context.

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