Increased efficiency, improved patient care and provider accountability

With less than 24 hours left until EHI Live 2012 kicks off in Birmingham, it's time for our partner Optevia to provide their insight in to what they get up to and their presence at EHI Live...

Optevia has been watching developments in the UK health space since the arrival of the Coalition government and the announcement that it was disbanding the (shhhhh) National Programme for IT (NPfIT) – the last time that will be mentioned by us!

It was really with the arrival of the Health and Social Care Act in early 2012 that real opportunities began to emerge for companies like Optevia. Organisations providing health and social care services are facing increasing pressures to maintain the quality and consistency of care while the sector undergoes transformation to meet the vision to modernise the NHS so that it is built around patients, led by health professionals and focused on delivering world-class healthcare outcomes.

Torbay and Southern Devon Health and Care NHS Trust, one of the country’s few providers of integrated health and adult social services, was the first trust to recognise the benefits of Microsoft Dynamics CRM in improving administrative efficiencies and patient care.

Mandy Seymour, the Trust’s COO, was adamant that the trust needed to employ more innovative and more integrated technology to support frontline staff, and enable them to deliver the safest and most effective care to their clients and patients.

In 2012, the trust embarked on a project to build a Single Community Care Record (SCCR). The Trust will use the system to provide staff with office-based and remote offline access to comprehensive and secure records of patient and client care details. Once deployed the Single Community Care Record will provide staff with access to the right information to deliver the right care in the right place and at the right time.

Dynamics CRM opens up a lot of capabilities for the IT team to rapidly respond to their internal customers - whether it be a new patient portal, managing a new initiative / clinic or business activities the team soon realise that they can create multiple types of line of business applications with generic .net and java in-house skills rather than specific development expertise. For example, at Torbay the Trust is beginning to plan all sorts of side projects using the same software to manage conditions, people, assets and business relationships.

The solution gives a strong starting point with a data model, screens, application navigation, security model, portals and mobile deployment that then allows configuration and integration as the business requirements take shape – no need to create weighty specifications, the business users are involved in the development as the solution takers shape. As Dynamics is fluently integrated with Microsoft Word and Excel and often used within Outlook the training required is fairly minimal and users soon see the power of a solution that gives them a true view of their work.

One Trust initially deployed CRM to manage Trust Communications with Members and Stakeholders and once familiar with the technology quickly realised that deploying a portal page that fed patient inputs directly into CRM which then sorted tasks, activities and appointments accordingly could help transform the level of monitoring; another has started a number of diverse pilot CRM projects using their in-house knowledge to integrate Patient systems with legal case management, mortality monitoring and tracking “off-record” email activity of professionals.

Optevia specialises in designing, configuring and deploying CRM solutions for the public sector – primarily local and central government, third party providers and charities. The Company was established in 2004, when it helped Bill Gates launch Dynamics CRM to the UK market. Optevia helps its clients to increase efficiency, improve patient care and provider accountability. It does this through innovative Microsoft Dynamics CRM based IT solutions.

Come and see how we support many Health organisations at EHI Live in Birmingham on 6/7November. We are part of the Microsoft Solutions Showcase on Stand E50.