BROMLEY HEALTHCARE

About Bromley Healthcare

Bromley Healthcare is one of the UK’s leading providers of community health services – providing a broad range of out of hospital services in Bromley and surrounding boroughs. They are renowned for their patient-focused approach to care in the community.

While their patient base grows, so too does their dedication to delivering the best possible care. They have grown by 22% in the last six years alone and they encourage frontline staff to make decisions based on the feedback they receive from patients. As of July 2017, Bromley has a 98% rounded average friends and family patient satisfaction score.

Needs: Remaining One of the Best in the UK

Bromley Healthcare were experiencing difficulties with the variety and expanse of data sources required for their reporting. They had recently implemented a new clinical system, which gave them access to a whole raft of data which they weren’t able to use to its full potential.

To increase the efficiency of their procedures whilst adhering to strict confidentiality rules, the organisation decided to invest in a Business Intelligence solution that could give them a multiplicity of benefits including:

Bringing together disparate data sources

Information staff were spending the majority of their day collecting and analysing data. For BHC, the right BI solution would mean a lot of time and effort saved from maintaining the mechanisms that gathered this data.

Sam explains, “We had some reports that had been built previously, with a different partner, but there wasn’t any automated data extraction so our information team was spending ages pulling the data which took up a lot of time and reduced the amount of time the team could spend on value added activities.”

Control

One major reason why Bromley Healthcare wanted to implement a new solution were clashing reports and Sam says, “We had the age old issue of different versions of the truth. Someone would present data somewhere, someone would present it somewhere else and it would be different.”

Real-time data and self-serviced analysis

Their strategy and management choices weren’t being based on real-time, insightful data and as such knew they wanted predictive analysis and reporting in order to enhance decision making. The organisation wanted to make the platform self-serviced so that employees could remain independent with little input from external companies.

Of the out-of-date information they were working from, Sam says, “The data that was being reviewed, was reviewed monthly and reviewed after the event… People weren’t able to use it throughout the month.”

Ensuring confidentiality

It was absolutely vital that the potential Business Intelligence solution could adhere to the strict confidentiality procedures. Private healthcare facilities must comply with these legal requirements, and for BHC that meant implementing access control. This feature would be vital when rolling out any solution, so that employees would have limited visibility to relevant information, and given restricted access with creating and viewing reports.

Sam explains that, “Confidentiality is key – publishing reports externally and internally it’s critical that patient confidentiality is maintained at all times.”

Visually appealing and easy to understand

To ensure that all employees are benefitting from the reports, Sam says, “As you can imagine, being an NHS company, we have lots of clinicians and their job is to go out and see the patients. We need to make sure that reports are visually appealing to them, and provide things in a clear way.”

Solution: Training the Trainer for Supported Success

“I approached about 16 software companies and software partners. We invited 8 of those to a workshop; we listened to what they had to say and we shortlisted four. Out of the four, three included some sort of Qlik solution.” Sam recalls.

Why Cybit?

Sam explains, “We were keen to find a partner who we could build a long term relationship with. We wanted to make sure that our team internally were skilled up, so that we could go back to our partner when we had something really technical that we needed. That’s what Cybit brought to us as a proposal, and that’s what really fitted with what we wanted and we thought that we could work really well together. Now our team are able to do that.”

At Cybit, we have a wealth of experience in working with the healthcare sector, and have partnered with various organisations to deliver solutions bespoke to their specific needs. To begin the consultation, an on-site session was arranged between Cybit and BHC to discover their pain points and what tools we could provide them with to remedy them.

• Workshops and training sessions were undertaken
• A plan was set out for roll-out on a prioritised basis
• Consultancy support was put in place
• Regular communication with BHC throughout

Sam says, “With Cybit, we found the workshops really helpful. It was a really constructive process because it meant that the team were left with really strong skills at the end of it. When Cybit was not on site we were able to build new reports ourselves.”

Benefits: Saving 20% in Time: “Qlik Brought Everything to the Table”

Effortless Extraction and Accurate Data

Now, automated extraction is saving Bromley Healthcare a lot of valuable time and effort. Qlik allows BHC to spot issues with data and rectify these at source and on a timely basis. By developing their existing dashboards and creating brand new, bespoke dashboards, the emphasis was shifted from one team dealing with the burden of data extraction, to a self-service solution that has seen a 20% reduction in workload.

“It’s driven the cleanse of the data and its embedded timely record keeping in our organisation… We removed inconsistencies that we had and we really proved the whole set of reporting.”

Gathering real-time data

Real-time analysis of KPIs and other performance indicators have enabled the company to become more efficient and productive and to react quickly. Previously Bromley Healthcare was working from historical data in month-end reports, but now they had the tools they needed to effectively drive change on current events and make a real impact.

Sam describes the new insight employees have: “If our patient consultations are not recorded in the correct way, we can’t charge our commissioners for them. We’ve put a value against those so that people can see not only how many consultations are not booked in the right way, they can see how much that is costing that service. So that means there’s less money we can spend on equipment for patients, for fewer nurses, fewer doctors – so people are understanding more what the data means. Before we had this, they didn’t really get that, it was just a set of numbers that management looked at.”

Reporting Needs

Qlik made it possible to extend the data that users were exposed to, for more meaningful insights. These reports were made available to staff and commissioners, to allow them to analyse data and lead positive growth and change. Data is compiled into one point of view cohesive, organisation-wide findings.

Of becoming proactive, Sam says, “For our executive and senior management team instead of getting that monthly, after the event reporting, they’re getting it at any point they like during the month. We’re able to address risks before they become issues.”

Self-Serviced in a Timely Manner

To equip employees with the required understanding of Qlik to maintain the dashboards themselves, there was a knowledge transfer between Cybit and the BHC data team. From the workshops and training, Bromley Healthcare was easily able to use the platform themselves, with its clear and easy-to-understand visuals.

Sam explains, “For the information team we’ve saved about 20% in time and I’m sure there’s more to come. With our automated extraction process, it’s massive, the standardised set up of reporting has been really good. Their efforts are now fully value-added, they’re able to focus on building reports, and each service has an assigned analyst so they work really closely and they are able to add more than they were before.”

Advanced Analytics

By providing them with the ability to forecast, BHC was able to plan staff and resources, monitor budget and effectively manage risk. Rapid data analysis and data modelling mean more complex predictive and spatial analytics for enhanced management decisions.

We also implemented geo-mapping, which Sam thinks has been very beneficial to Bromley Healthcare: “We did some reports recently to show where we should base our clinics, based on where the patients were in the area. It was easy to use, we didn’t feel we needed to have a whole raft of developers building these reports; with the skills that we had in the organisation we could do that quite easily.”

Maintain Confidentiality

For their new BI platform, we made sure that there was access control, so each employee could only see exactly what they were supposed to. This minimised risk when dealing with and sharing data, viewing their personalised dashboards.

Overall, Sam’s opinion is that: “For all of the reasons that we said, for the big long wish list that we had, Qlik brought everything to the table and that for us was really important.”

Future: Developing Data Analytics to Benefit Patients

BHC has seen a massive increase in those using, and wanting to use, the platform: “We started off with a smaller licence number and that’s growing exponentially to more and more people.”

Going forward, their goals are to become even more open and transparent for the benefit of their patients, by publishing real-time stats online for anyone to view, and to know on an ongoing basis what Bromley are doing. They are looking into integrating Qlik Sense Cloud as they feel it will bring some value in publishing to their care network.

Of working with Cybit, Sam concludes, “When we need them, they’re there. We’ve worked with different people in the team now and we get the same level of service and expertise from everyone that we’ve dealt with so we’re very happy.”