Ardens Manager launches their new Capacity and Access Improvement Dashboard

Recently, there have been significant changes to the GP Contract including reduction to IIF indicators, worth £59m, and reallocation of £246m to the Capacity and Access Payment.

Ardens has launched a new dedicated Capacity and Access dashboard on Ardens Manager to facilitate monitoring and benchmarking activity at GP Practice, Primary Care Network (PCN), Integrated Care Board (ICB) and national levels.

Ardens Manager Overview

Ardens has been at the forefront of Primary Care Informatics for over a decade. It provides an end-to-end solution encompassing various resources including Clinical Decision Support, Reporting, Referrals, Data Quality tools, and a comprehensive dashboard suite.

Ardens Manager is a data analytics tool which provides various dashboards enabling patient and payment monitoring at GP Practice, PCN and ICB level. Dashboards are available for long term conditions, prescribing, vaccinations, QOF, Network Contract DES (including IIF), NHS Health Checks, SMI Health Checks, Local Contract Management and more.

For further information, please see the Ardens Manager website.

Capacity and Access Data

The Capacity and Access dashboard on Ardens Manager combines multiple data sources into a single interface to make monitoring improvement as easy as possible. For further information and screenshots, please see Ardens Manager Capacity and Access webpage.

Patient Experience

PCNs are required to assess Friends & Family Test (FFT) data, along with the previous five years of GP Patient Survey results (GPPS), to establish a baseline and devise strategies for enhancement. Ardens Manager simplifies this process by integrating two sources of patient experience data, eliminating the need for manual uploads from GP Practices, PCNs, or ICBs. The dashboard allows PCNs to compare their performance against ICB and national average trends over time, empowering them with valuable insights to drive improvements.

Online Access

Online access to healthcare services is becoming increasingly important and this has also been highlighted in the NHS England Delivery plan for recovering access to primary care. The Ardens Manager dashboard integrates Patient Online Management Information (POMI), which enables users to monitor the number of patients registered for online access, such as through the NHS app, and analyse their usage patterns. By monitoring this activity, PCNs can gain insights into how their population accesses healthcare services, allowing them to identify ways to encourage increased usage, signposting and reduce the burden on GP Practices.

Appointment Activity

The accuracy of recording appointments is a significant factor in capacity and access improvements. Ardens Manager Dashboard addresses this by incorporating GP Appointment Data (GPAD), enabling PCNs to monitor activity, identify unmapped appointment slots, and track progress towards national targets, such as the percentage of patients seen within two weeks. With this comprehensive appointment data at their fingertips, PCNs can make informed decisions to optimise their appointment and scheduling processes.

Workforce

Understanding the available workforce capacity is essential before implementing any access and appointment improvements. Ardens Manager pulls in GP and PCN workforce data, empowering GP Practices and PCNs to monitor and benchmark their practices against others within their network and ICB. PCNs can specifically monitor and benchmark their Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme (ARRS) workforce per 1,000 registered patients, with the aim of alleviating pressure on GPs and nurses.

Evidencing Action

Ardens Manager provides a platform for PCNs to record and track their action plans throughout each stage of the appointment process. By incorporating organisational activity, PCNs can develop robust, data-driven improvement plans to enhance capacity and access which can easily be exported and provided to their ICB.

Activation

Since the launch on the 17th May 2023, over 2,500 organisations have now activated the Ardens Manager Capacity and Access dashboard.

If your organisation is interested in this or accessing any dashboard available on Ardens Manager, please contact us to arrange a demonstration. We also offer a free one-month free trial to explore the full range of features and benefits that Ardens Manager has to offer.