One of the basic principles of data warehousing is that there should be a single source of data that everyone uses. Working with our customers across the county, Kent and Medway Health Informatics Service (KMHIS) has built a comprehensive data warehouse containing a range of data that is essential for good quality reporting. Using this data warehouse, primary care, secondary care, SUS and community data can be linked by NHS number to provide case history and a level of pathway information.
Paul Bolton, Head of Business Intelligence, KMHIS, says: “Once the stakeholders are using separate sources of data there will always be conflict and never resolutions – a single source of data, by its very nature, will gradually and steadily improve in completeness and accuracy. KMHIS has access to daily data direct from the acute trusts that enable almost real time reporting.”
David Woodhead, GP lead for the Dartford, Gravesham and Swanley CCG, commented: “We have been able to develop outcome reports to support clinical change such as live A&E reports to help practices and commissioners identify where additional support or intervention is needed.”
David continues: “We were able to develop a report showing care home use of A&E – detailing patients presenting complaints and whether they were admitted or not. This led directly to interventions by community providers, Kent County Council and GPs to give extra support to reduce A&E attendances for this group. The speed of report development is amazing – we required a trend graph of daily A&E activity relating to just our locality: the report was requested that morning and was up and working within half a day and the live update was available for a contract meeting that afternoon.”
Anne-Marie Morgan, Associate Director, Business Intelligence for NHS Kent and Medway, commented: “Clinicians have given us really positive feedback about the valuable insight now being gleaned from integrated primary and secondary care dashboards, while real-time demand monitoring is now being rolled out in many parts of the cluster. These tools also provide great value for money as developments are scalable across Kent and Medway.”
David says: “The only limit so far has been our imagination. Given the new world of CCGs and the critical requirement for quality of patient care, the ability to define and capture quality markers to support our commissioning is vital and the HISbi service is proving its worth linking activity, financial and, most important, clinical outcomes together.”
See also, e-Health Insider Primary Care Issue 355
