In the recent Convenzis Data Conference Lee Rickles, CIO of Humber Teaching NHS Foundation Trust outlined the vital need for an accurate data foundation if we are to improve operational performance and deliver shared care. Lee, who is both CIO at Humber and Programme Director for the award-winning Yorkshire and Humber Shared Care Record (LHCRE exemplar), spoke of how crucial it is to have quality data that is normalised and standardised so we can compare like-with-like and truly move from single entity, trust-based care to shared care across a region or an ICS.

As he outlines in the webinar:

  • Data is the new oil – and while the NHS has lots of data most of it is unstructured, or even bad data, with much duplication across disparate data sets in multiple formats with little or no reconciliation between each. What we need is a single consolidated version of the truth for effective decision-making throughout the hospital, across the community and ultimately the ICS.
  • Getting the right data foundations – whilst there are some NHS standards available such as HL7 and SNOMED there are still many areas, such as finance, where they are non-existent or woolly. As a result, consolidating all data related to patient care becomes a huge challenge. One where the services of data experts, such as Insource, are invaluable. In Humber disparate data sets such as admin data from the PAS, clinical data from Lorenzo, or community data from TPP’s SystmOne, staff rostering ESR (Electronic Staff Record), and finance data are combined into a unified data source for accurate cross boundary care.
  • Managing Trust-wide performance – the secondary use of data must be to get the right staff in the right place to enable care. With the NHS’s current workload gut feel won’t do! Data accuracy is vital to underpin resource assignment and performance, to support detailed decisions, finance allocations with PLICS (Patient Level costing) and track real patient outcomes.
  • ICS Sharing – as we move towards ICSs, we don’t need to be measuring different things. In Humber’s case, their data feeds into the Yorkshire and Humber Shared Care Record for a bi-directional sharing of messages and accurate care management. With the move towards Preventative care good data and the use of the wider data set becomes essential. We will need a holistic view across clinical, resources, estates, equipment.
  • Good data saves lives – Good data can provide input into care plans, crisis management, ambulance care delivery. Shared care and a unified data layer are vital platforms for the establishment of effective ICSs.
  • Lee Rickles – Humber CIO
    Talks about getting the data foundations right

Humber Teaching NHS Foundation Trust
Humber Teaching NHS Foundation Trust provides community and therapy services, primary care, community and inpatient mental health services, learning disability services, health lifestyle support and addiction services. The Trust is an integrated provider of health and care services across Hull, the East Riding of Yorkshire, Whitby, Scarborough and Ryedale. It covers a population of 765,000 people across an area of 4,700 square kilometres.

Insource helping to deliver integrated mental health and community services
Humber employs 2,800 staff and delivers mental health and community services across 79 sites. The Insource data management platform takes disparate data from the clinical and community systems, normalises it against key trust and national data standards and generates a single unified source of the truth. The TPP SystmOne Community system proved a significant challenge for Humber as it creates 42 data extract units from the various locations across the region, Community Hospitals, Minor injuries and Community Care… A lot of these extracts contained duplicate records and couldn’t be amalgamated into a single data feed.

Data management platform
The Insource data management solution now enables Humber to consolidate data from across the region for accurate care management and complete patient tracking of referrals, appointments attended, services provided etc. It allows the Trust to easily generate full and accurate Community Services Data Set (CMDS) reporting. And facilitates full CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services) support for all its learning disability patients. But perhaps more importantly, the Trust are able to track the effectiveness of their mental health care as patients get older and are able to lead fulfilling lives in the community.

Bringing together all community systems data
Humber have been a customer for over 10 years during which time Insource have brought together data from all their community systems into one place for effective care planning and reporting. Also, during a period of staff changes, the Insource data management platform provided a base of stability that ensured continued data automation, data integration and the data quality needed to keep processes running throughout the Trust.

Whilst data accuracy and region-wide data consolidation is a largely unseen capability it is perhaps the most critical as we move towards data aggregation and region-wide service integration with ICSs, Elective Care Hubs and ultimately preventative care.