South West London and St Georges NHS Mental Health Care Trust have implemented a new support management system called Magic in order to prepare for implementation of a new RiO system.
Magic has been developed by IT service software specialists BMC Software and is described as “IT Service Support for the Midsized Business.”
It is designed to help companies reduce costs and expedite service by keeping IT informed, connected, and aligned with the business. In addition, these products work together to provide an integrated ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) compatible consolidated service desk solution
The trust’s previous service desk was staffed by three people and was reliant upon an Access database to log user calls. As a result the Trust had no figures on number of calls, their location or time to resolution. There was no opportunity to track trends or identify areas that needed technical or training input. Poor communication between the IT management and IT technical teams also led to confusion over system changes, which led to unacceptable unplanned downtime.
West London and St Georges serves a local population of about one million people across five south London boroughs, caring for over 15,000 patients. With 780 beds and 30 Community Mental Health Teams, the trust is responsible for all community and hospital psychiatric services across Wandsworth, Merton, Sutton, Richmond and Kingston, and has struggled to provide a high level of service and support to all six sites.
The trusts project manager, Fazila Suleman, said: “Part of the requirement for implementing this application is the adoption of ITIL processes at the service desk. It was very clear that the adoption of ITIL processes for service desk, change management, release management and incident management would create the right environment for the deployment of NPfIT applications. It will also enable the creation of targeted service level agreements across the Trust.”
As well as wanting to develop better service and support, the trust are also preparing to implement a new RiO system.
Suleman said: “Without ITIL adoption the trust would not have been able to proceed as a pilot site for the RiO system. The trust faces a challenging time ahead with significant changes to the IT infrastructure. Defining and meeting relevant service level agreements will go a long way towards easing the transformation process.
“The combination of the Acora Smart Centre methodology and the consultants’ ability to explain the need for best practice to staff has given the Trust a head start in transforming IT service delivery.”
With no internal ITIL experience, the trust recruited Acora, an organisation that has attained significant experience in implementing ITIL across the NHS, including Guy’s and St Thomas’, to implement the new system and improve both the quality of service and information captured to drive ongoing improvements.
Suleman said: “Acora’s consultants have helped the Trust to set expectations and define requirements, particularly in areas such as information gathering and reporting. This level of communication will become increasingly important across the NHS as more components of the National Programme are delivered.”
Acora trained 25 staff on how to use the ITIL solution in order to help them understand the trusts goals and objectives and give them a common language across all service and support functions, followed by a workshop approach to explain the changes and embed the new ITIL processes across the service delivery team.
New services, such as making the Service Catalogue available on the intranet, are increasing the visibility of the service desk and making the IT service delivery process far more proactive.
Suleman said: “The Trust is in the process of defining Service Level Agreements between IT and user departments. With improved understanding of what can be delivered and accurate metrics about what is already being delivered, we can have the frank discussions required to define ongoing service requirements.”
A BT spokesperson told EHI that the trust was one of 16 trusts who have now gone live with the RiO system.
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South West London and St Georges NHS Mental Health Care Trust