Business intelligence specialists, Ardentia, have completed their first full go-live of the Pathway Manager 18 week wait monitoring tool, and have announced a further two orders from NHS trusts.
Dudley Group of Hospitals NHS Trust is the first to have deployed the new Pathway Manager package, which was developed with Microsoft, and pools together reporting data from any trust system to provide 18 weeks referral to treatment (RTT) statistics.
Further orders have now been made for the solution from Morecambe Bay NHS Trust and Thurrock University Hospitals Foundation Trust, who are both in the process of implementing the system now.
Ardentia’s marketing director, David Beeson, told E-Health Insider: “Ardentia have been piloting the Pathway Manager system for almost a month now at four sites, one of which was Dudley. They realised that the great thing about this new system is that it helps to build pathways from existing data, which is an essential requirement in order to meet the 18 weeks target deadline for 100% compliance by December 2008.”
Ardentia say they saw a need to develop a system that would ‘tackle the problems of current systems not collecting RTT data adequately.’
Beeson said: “Many of the systems currently in use by trusts do not have pathway identifiers and so results collection is often not clear and does not meet national reporting requirements. Pathway Manager has been developed to ensure that it does identify and build patient pathways, and then identifies the RTT pathways within them. It will automatically generate reports trusts need for DH targets, and makes data collection much more simple.”
Dudley is the first to go fully live with the system, but pilots are still being run at the Countess of Chester Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Milton Keynes General NHS Trust and Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust.
As EHI reported on Wednesday http://www.e-health-insider.com/news/item.cfm?ID=2873, no trusts in the South or London are currently using Cerner Millennium for 18 week RTT data measurements, though the functionality is available.
Four of the DH’s 18 week pioneer sites are using iSoft patient administration systems to collect data demonstrating their compliance. Only one, South Bedfordshire, is using an iSoft iPM system for this. The company’s Lorenzo product, due for release next year, is the solution that CSC, local service provider to the Midlands and North of England says will help achieve 100% accurate reports.
However, Beeson says that Ardentia have looked into the demand for such systems, and a recent tele-marketing campaign demonstrated to them that trusts do not want to wait, and want a pathway solution now.
“Meeting DH requirements can be extremely difficult without the right system, and even though December 2008 is a good while away, trusts are already starting to think in terms of pathways and want to start building them from their existing data streams now. Pathway Manager offers an effective way of feeding all information to the back end of a huge database, which can then be streamlined and converted into clear and easy to understand reports, essential for keeping tabs on meeting targets.”
Pathway Manager’s RTT module simplifies and streamlines the management of patient pathways, identifying key event stages and calculating waiting times. Advanced reporting functionality gives healthcare managers immediate access to the current status of all patient pathways, to report on waiting times and risks of breaches to 18-week regulations.
Beeson says that the pilot sites have demonstrated a range of benefits to the trusts involved.
“Our pilot sites have told us how they noticed just how often regulations are breached… and with reports from the system have been able to crack down on this. There is a belief from the sites that there are lot of savings that can be made from such a system, including saving around £100,000 a year in staff time sorting out data in reports.”
Morecambe and Basildon are expecting to go-live with the system in the next couple of months, and Ardentia say they continue to talk with trusts interested in finding a solution to the 18 weeks RTT challenge.
Ardentia and Microsoft are now hosting an event at the Microsoft Conference Centre in September to demonstrate the system and its benefits.
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