Dashboards have been quite a topic of contention in certain circles with the recent recirculation of Taylor Brownlow’s essay ”Are Dashboards Dead?”.

While I’m of the opinion that no, dashboards are not dead, they have been undeniably overused and often misunderstood, with a disconnect between a dashboard’s actual function versus our perceived function of them. 

Why is there dashboard fatigue?

Many of us have experienced dashboard fatigue, and rightfully so. As businesses, how many dashboards have we commissioned that were never fully utilised, if used at all? The answer is too many.

The reason for low engagement isn’t the fault of the humble dashboard, but rather that a dashboard was never the appropriate solution for the end user, or its design wasn’t tailored enough to the business use case.  

When faced with a business problem requiring data insights, we often jump straight to dashboard creation. However, there are many other solutions that can be tailored to deliver data insights, such as concise reports and static presentations. With an increased understanding of where dashboards fail, the conversation has shifted to questioning their relevance altogether.  

So, what place do dashboards still have in businesses, and how can we better understand where they excel to drive improved outcomes? 

What potential challenges may arise with dashboards?

There are many instances where dashboards may be less effective or complicate matters for businesses, and other methods provide a better solution. Instances may include: 

• When the user needs a concise answer to a question:
  Dashboards require interaction and exploration, which can be time-consuming. If a stakeholder needs a straightforward answer, a tailored report is more efficient.  
• For business specific, niche questions:
  Not every level of enquiry warrants the resource-intensive creation of a dashboard. For narrow, targeted questions, simpler reporting methods suffice. 
• One-time insights:
  Dashboards are overkill for static data projects, such as measuring the success of a single transformation. In these cases, producing a well-crafted report or presentation is more resource-efficient. 
• If the data is exported for analysis:
  If users regularly export dashboard data to manipulate it elsewhere, it’s a sign that the dashboard doesn’t meet their needs or wasn’t necessary to begin with. 

When might dashboards be the right solution?

Company-wide reporting platforms

Dashboards provide a unified view of performance across teams, offering consistent delivery of insights to aiding faster decision making, customisable filters for views specific to each business unit, efficiency in distributing insights without the need for manual reporting and increased data accessibility through data visualisation. 

Regular cadence reporting

For tracking ongoing metrics such as daily sales, customer trends or campaign performance, and measuring progress against targets, dashboards provide updated insights without the wait. 

Exploratory analysis

Whenusers want to discover patterns, relationships or unknown trends within the data, dashboards allow for interactive interrogation. These tools are especially valuable for data-savvy end users, enabling self-service exploration without requiring an analyst’s intervention. 

Monitoring ongoing initiatives

Dashboards are excellent for tracking live projects or recurring business processes, offering real-time visibility into performance. 

The future approach for dashboards

With the above in mind, we’re moving to a more informed approach where dashboards are no longer a tiresome, default solution, but a carefully considered tool.

The future isn’t about abandoning dashboards, but about being intentional and strategic in their creation and deployment. The key is facilitating dashboard creation in a way that adds tangible value and is thoughtfully configured to provide meaningful, actionable insights that empower decision making. 

How CACI can help

At CACI, we work with you to deliver the best solutions for your analysis needs. Our extensive experience in successfully implementing dashboards across diverse industries highlights several key scenarios where dashboards have proven to be highly effective.  

Whether it’s creating a bespoke, one-off report or developing a suite of comprehensive, customisable dashboards, contact us to find out more about how our user centric approach and industry expertise can help you gain meaningful analytics that will drive strategic business outcomes. 

Key issues for countries and the businesses that operate within them to address in terms of climate change unfolded at the recent 28^th UN Climate Change Conference (COP28). These issues urge immediate and significant action to be taken on fossil fuels and clean energy, national adaptation and climate finance, methane reduction, land use and more.

What does environmental sustainability in business mean?

Environmental sustainability in business is the operation of a business that does not compromise the environment. A business that has considered environmental sustainability prioritises the environment’s best interest, with society and its ecosystems coming before making a profit. It involves responsible decision-making that minimizes carbon footprint or waste while simultaneously improving the quality of life for humankind and the natural world alike.

Unfortunately, however, operating businesses as usual has had an increasingly detrimental impact on our planet. According to the latest State of the Global Climate report by the WMO, 2023 was the warmest year on record at about 1.4C,increasing pressure to shift their operations to more environmentally sustainable practices. This inevitably causes businesses to consider—where do we start? How do we begin making a difference?

What is the importance of environmental sustainability in business?

According to an article published by Maryville University, businesses that do not act responsibly will result in “the majority of many species not surviving past the 21st century”, reiterating how critical it is for businesses within every industry to take part in improving their environmental surroundings.

Although companies have a way to go before fully grasping the repercussions of ever-growing carbon footprints, those willing to tackle this challenge early on will get a head start on reshaping perspectives and realities.

Environmental sustainability in business practices

Businesses can rely on the three R’s– reduce, reuse and recycle– to begin reducing their environmental impact. However, there are several other examples of practices that businesses can incorporate into their operations amplify their reduction, including:

• Life cycle assessments
• Designing environmentally friendly products/services
• Optimising product efficiency
• Decreasing supply chain carbon footprint
• Re-evaluating CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) expenses

Benefits of environmental sustainability in business

Reduces the impact of business costs

While the cost-of-living crisis is skyrocketing, improving the energy efficiency of business operations and decreasing waste will go a long a way in bracing for the impact of unexpected business costs. Using more energy efficient lighting or reusing existing resources can be quick-fix solutions for lowering costs.

Improves a business’ reputation

Environmentally sustainable businesses are viewed as a plus, and companies are eager to highlight this fact. Companies that can go “green” show that they’re serious about making a difference in the environment and are interested in more than just profitability. Businesses that can market themselves and develop their identity around their commitment to the betterment of the planet will notice incredible results in terms of their reputation.

Who is responsible for improving environmental sustainability in a business?

Businesses have been expected to pave the way towards environmental sustainability due to their notably significant contribution towards polluting the environment through waste, gas emissions and plastics generated. The responsibility does not necessarily begin with one individual within a business though– employees at every level of the business must work together to bring about change. A few examples include:

• Business owners and leaders: Business owners and leaders are typically capable of leading strategic decision-making that influences the wider business. They can develop effective sustainability strategies and initiatives that have the power to change policy and induce change.
• Business managers and supervisors: Managers and supervisors can supply valuable insights due to their more hands-on roles. They also typically have different perspectives and understandings as to how to improve business sustainability.
• Employees: Employees can supply valuable contributions when encouraged to voice their opinions and concerns on how the business can become more sustainable.

Impact of environmental sustainability in business

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy is striving to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050. It’s going to take strong leadership, business-wide alignment on operations and an engaged corporate culture to successfully execute and maintain environmentally sustainable business practices. Businesses that start addressing these issues and challenge existing business processes will find themselves making a breakthrough towards becoming more environmentally sustainable while protecting the world around them.

How can CACI help you overcome these obstacles?

Our newly developed Mood Environmental Hub helps track all of your assets across multiple geographic locations and assess the environmental impact of your business.

With a single click, users can drill down from multi-site, business-level functions, to departments or even individual teams to determine asset types and locations, enabling a quick assessment of priority focus areas for improvement. It can also visualise existing data through user-friendly dashboards that show carbon impact, consumption and cost at an enterprise level.

The advanced modelling feature also outlines potential improvements, indicating ROI and carbon reduction impact. Additionally, you can easily check performance against carbon commitments such as Social Value through the initiatives tracker.

Producing carbon reduction target tracking reports or modelling for a business case is now a click away – to see how it works, you can book a demo here.

The idea of trauma informed practice has been around for a while no). It remains, however, a burgeoning area of practice.

The West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) is attempting to take this forward into commissioning policy. Through a coalition of public service agencies, it aims to promote a framework for trauma informed practice in the region. Knowledge, practice-based evidence, data sharing, combined training and service inputs will set new pathways towards achieving better outcomes for all children in the region.

“Trauma informed practice is a journey, not a destination,” says Lucy Cavell Senior Trauma Informed Practitioner at Barnardo’s, the children’s charity which is coordinating the work of the WMCA trauma informed coalition which sets a policy direction.

There are different approaches in the seven constituent local authorities. For example, Birmingham City Council has a slightly different flavour to other organisations, having taken a holistic approach to training around trauma informed practice within children’s services and schools.

“We’re creating a community of practice on behalf of the coalition. There’s a sharing of knowledge and of best practice being implemented. The coalition is a reflective space with strategic support for locally based networks. It accepts the regional differences in localities such as Birmingham, Coventry and Wolverhampton, but it’s still early days, we’re still learning, gathering knowledge and promoting connections and promoting building the evidence base.”

Trauma informed practice in the West Midlands

The WMCA trauma informed coalition was established in 2022 in response to Punishing Abuse, to develop trauma informed practice in the localities. It includes the West Midlands police force, public health, primary care, local authority children’s services, schools, faith groups and charities including homelessness, temporary accommodation, drug, alcohol, domestic violence and mental health.

The trauma informed coalition is borrowing from the learning about violence reduction and service developments in Scotland and other regions, such as in Wales, aiming to adapt this to the history and demographics of the WMCA.

“We saw the potential in being involved in such a coalition and the benefit that it can bring to so many vulnerable children,” says Lucy. “Punishing Abuse is a powerful piece of work that demands action.

One of the primary barriers to this is siloed short-term responses. Services interact with children in the way that they see as being most appropriate and that makes sense to them. Children move in and out to other areas of the regional system with unseen and unmet needs and are dealt with in an entirely different way.”

The importance of a more optimal and joined-up approach which is able to consider much more of the individual context of each child’s journey is something we’ve written about previously.

“One aspect has been the simple creation of training material to promote trauma informed practice,” says Lucy. “We’ve seen real leadership buy-in from the police, with training delivered to over 2,300 officers and staff so far. This covers the basics, from psychology and behaviours to appropriate skills in formulating partnership responses. This has seen a much more compassionate response from the police towards children, young people and families and their communities. Simply by understanding their behaviours differently it has increased the window of tolerance in police settings.”

What the future will bring

There is no blueprint for trauma informed practice and it remains a development area of work with vulnerable young people and their families. As Lucy outlines, there is no one-size-fits-all approach that will work.

“We hope that establishing a trauma informed framework via the coalition will at least set us on the path to end the punishment of abuse,” concludes Lucy. “The goal is to commission interventions that facilitate systemic resilience. Of particular interest and relevance to establishing a consistent unified approach across Educational settings is the Trauma Informed and Attachment Aware Schools regional certification model, informed by the work of ARC, Virtual Schools, Educational Psychology Services and Barnardo’s in the region.“

“At the heart of the coalition is the intention to engage with adversity and trauma in regional localities to meet needs in an optimal way. Further, to promote evidence from effective collaborative partnership practice by capturing, monitoring and sharing relevant data and the context of individual, family and community adversity and trauma ethically. The objective is to make smarter service commissioning investments for the longer-term future of the region. There will be a need to step back to see what works and what doesn’t. It is, after all, early days.”

Patient-Level Information and Costing Systems (PLICS) are data collection and cost information tools used to collect and analyse patient data that will help measure and manage costs. They help NHS organisations make sense of the costs of delivering specific services to patients and find out where costs can be reduced or efficiencies can be maximised.

But how exactly do they work? And what makes them so beneficial for the NHS? We’ll be exploring this in this blog to help you make informed decisions about your own PLICS solution.

How do PLICS work?

PLICS collate data from a range of records and sources to give you intricate details into a patient’s diagnosis, treatment, length of stay at a hospital and more. Collecting patient data from diagnosis to treatment creates a granular and accurate picture of the associated costs that come with patient care– much more valuable than via traditional methods like top-down allocation costs.

PLICS can also calculate the cost of each patient’s care and treatment, allowing you to view patient variations in much greater detail. If you can leverage PLICS, you’ll find it incredibly powerful thanks to its ability to link cost data at patient level to guarantee optimal patient care outcomes. You can use this information to make informed decisions about treatments and resources for patients or even to negotiate insurance rate payments.

Benefits of using PLICS

PLICS can offer plenty of useful and accurate data on a case-by-case basis that exceeds the capabilities of traditional costing methods. Its range of benefits include:
• Gives managers and clinicians a detailed picture of costs to help them judge the legitimacy of costs across all patients.
• Shows any discrepancies that may be resulting in higher or lower costs across the organisation or pinpoint inefficiencies between teams to help determine what to do about them.
• Enhances the accuracy of budget projections and provides the necessary insights to model changes for patient groups.
• Highlights patient demographics and treatment pathways to optimise decision-making in resource allocation, process improvement and quality of care for patients.

PLICS use cases

PLICS data can be impactful in many instances, especially when validating cost variations. A successfully integrated PLICS will allow users to share their learnings on how to detect, diagnose and address cost variations across the wider organisation to change or improve costing processes.

To get a sense of just how much more than the NCC submission can be accomplished through a PLICS system, take a look at some of our client case studies:

• United Lincolnshire increase income through costing analysis
• Oxford Health save time and funding through detailed data analysis

CACI as your PLICS provider

Making sure you have the tools to effectively engage with stakeholders across your organisation is at the heart of what we do. We help equip you with the necessary skills to get the most out of your patient costing solution, meet your requirements and improve patient outcomes.

CACI’s very own PLICS, Synergy, is a state-of-the-art patient level costing solution complete with fast calculation times, exception analysis with full audit trails and patient activity mapping. It also comes with prepopulated standards (datasets, cost allocations and methodologies), which will enable you to produce costs easily and efficiently at patient level.

It’s an easy-to-use, simple to set up solution that is highly secure (HSCN connected facility), with Healthcare Costing Standards configured.

To learn more about PLICS and how our costing system could help your organisation, visit our Synergy page.

How does a challenging economy affect consumer choices and priorities that shape the UK market for elderly care?

It’s no surprise that the cost of living squeeze is having an impact on elderly care operators. Private residential and domestic care cost money: consumers are looking for ways to economise. Older people want and need comfort and care as much as ever, but they and their families are tightening their belts. Inevitably, they’re considering the cost of different care settings and options.

What does this mean for residential and domiciliary care providers? It’s early days, but as for every other consumer sector, you need to be prepared for the market to change. A proactive approach to understanding current and future customers and modelling potential demand in your locations can uncover opportunities to maintain occupancy and optimise your services to match evolving priorities and needs.

If you don’t have a crystal ball to hand, that may sound like a tall order. But knowing and anticipating market demand in your locations doesn’t depend on magic or guesswork. Consumer and location data together provide reliable evidence that can help you identify ways to stay relevant, accessible and financially stable.

Not all groups are impacted to the same extent by the rising costs of living. The majority of Acorn Groups still have a sizeable disposable income despite the recent 5% average fall.

Source: CACI Paycheck Disposable Income 2022 v2

Despite the bleak headlines, the economic impact varies considerably for different household types and in different areas. Many older consumers still have savings, disposable income or assets that allow them to choose the care they want. If you can understand the profile of your current and future customers in detail, it’s easier to identify and reach out to local prospects.

Location intelligence data is a well-established source of insight for care home operators and domestic care providers that are considering expansion or new sites. Mapping the age and affluence of the local population in a potential catchment helps to indicate where there’s likely demand for elderly care services.

But alongside age and income, there’s a lot of more subtle data that can help you market your existing services, confirm or reshape your propositions, benchmark your pricing and adjust the range and type of services you offer. This type of insight is extremely useful in a fast-changing market.

CACI data insights can answer crucial questions about your customers and market:

• What are the characteristics of your local and target customers? Acorn profiling groups UK consumers by affluence, life stage and priorities
• What are your current and potential customers thinking, feeling and intending to do differently Quarterly Consumer insight surveys of the UK population
• How has customer spending on different outgoings changed? Transactional spending data shows the split of spend with different brands and operators
• Whose disposable income is affected? Postcode model of income in different locations, showing how it’s being spent.
• What’s around the corner? Dynamic modelling forecasts what could happen to consumer spending if inflation, fuel and other costs rise in a range of different ways

CACI’s current disposable income model reflects the changes we’ve observed in the last few months. Although all households are affected by rising costs, the majority of our Acorn consumer profile groups still have a significant disposable income. It’s groups like Student Life and City Sophisticates that have seen the largest decline, driven by property costs.

There has been major growth in spend on private healthcare, with a wide range of demographics prioritising health over other non-essential spending.

Source: CACI Transactional Spend, June 2022

For elderly care operators, it’s encouraging to note that Comfortable Seniors, Countryside Communities and Successful Suburbs, who are likely to form far more of the target market, have some of the highest levels of disposable income, reflecting smaller or non-existent mortgages, good pensions and comfortable savings accrued over previous years.

Spending on private healthcare has increased in the past year. The Covid-19 pandemic and concerns about NHS waiting lists are driving this change in priorities for households across most Acorn groups. Despite rising essential costs, many consumers now regard healthcare expenditure as a necessity, not a luxury. This could have a positive impact on perceptions of value in elderly care.

These are just the headlines from our latest national data. Every elderly care provider has a different operating model and works in unique locations. CACI’s health and social care team can select data and build customised reports that directly reflect the opportunities and changes happening in your catchment areas today and tomorrow. For mid-sized operators, it’s vital decision-making information to inform strategy and tactical decisions that will help your business compete and thrive in a challenging economy.

We can help you:

• Continuously analyse, monitor and adapt – stay ahead of policy and new competitors when finding new customers and recruits
• Tailor marketing engagement and recruitment key messages to reflect the requirements of local potential pools of customers and staff
• Understand your staff and customer base and how its segments are impacted by different cost of living challenges, to identify risk and opportunity
• Tailor your offer to changing consumer and staff requirements

CACI’s specialist elderly care and senior living team work with clients in the UK and internationally to help them improve operational and financial performance with access to vital insights into their customers, employees and locations.

To find out more, contact us.

One of the few bright spots of the Covid-19 pandemic was the response we saw from society and its services. The NHS and health services in particular were placed under great strain, having to reconfigure, almost overnight, how vital health services would be maintained, how Covid patients would be treated and how staff would be kept safe. The NHS rose to the challenge, giving cause for optimism around the implementation of integrated care services (ICSs).

ICSs will bring about changes in IT and software infrastructure, namely in the way that services are aligned and data is shared. The aim is to provide a more joined-up patient care experience whilst also equipping each service within an ICS with the information that they need on a patient. This will reduce duplication of work, driving efficiency through the care ecosystem.

As ever, theory and practice can remain divergent from one another, so getting each facet of an ICS to become interoperable with the rest of the services will be a challenge. The pandemic, however, shows that interoperable services can be achieved.

Why is the pandemic relevant?

With society closing down, hospital admissions spiking and other care services suffering from the knock-on affect of the redistribution of professionals and services, health services changed dramatically in a breathlessly short space of time.

PPE had to be provided to frontline workers. Beds had to be made available to Covid patients. Super hospitals were built in London and Birmingham, although thankfully weren’t needed.

Then there was the rapid response of producing a vaccine. That vaccine then needed administering on a basis of vulnerability. The elderly and unwell were vaccinated first, then the rest of society in descending age brackets.

Village halls were turned into testing and vaccination centres. A whole new technological ecosystem had to be created to record the administration of vaccines and note how many cases were being experienced. From testing to vaccines to deployment, the response was immediate and brilliantly executed for the most part. When the chips were down, health services responded.

How can ICSs learn from this?

The rapid redeployment of resources, as well as the creation and implementation of a technology ecosystem to record outcomes was impressive. Health services can respond at short notice to new challenges.

The roll out of ICSs isn’t nearly so dramatic. There is planning and oversight in place, but it will result in changes to the way data is recorded and shared. Change isn’t always something that we embrace, but the sentiment of improving and enhancing the delivery of care services can only be a good thing.

We’ve also seen that the way in which we approach healthcare has changed. Phone and video appointments are now more commonplace, creating efficiency in the process. Vaccines are still being rolled out to combat Covid, a reminder of the pace of change and how it has altered the healthcare landscape.

Change can be embraced and implemented quickly. The pandemic has shown us that. It’s one of the few positives to emerge from the episode.

How can technology help?

Technology is fundamental to how ICSs go about meeting the challenge of creating interoperable services (something we explored in more detail here). The response to handling Covid test results and the roll out of the vaccine required intelligent use of technology to underpin the process. It also kept other services moving, with the switch to video calls and so forth for routine appointments. The upheaval in staff schedules also required a systems response to manage it.

Technology can be sourced and implemented quickly. With the drive to data sharing, other aspects such as data regulations must also be considered, so the main challenge is selecting the right partner for the needs of your services. The needs of each facet of an ICS are bespoke, so a technology solution that fits your requirements is paramount, to ensure that data is utilised your way and that rules are adhered to.

It’s inconceivable that a single technology system would be appropriate across an entire ICS, so selecting the right technology is important. It will, however, need to support the wider aims of the ICS in creating knowledge and information sharing across services.

Conclusion

Technology will be vital to the success of ICSs, as it was to the response to the pandemic and the ongoing vaccine rollout. As we start to emerge from the shadow of the pandemic, there is a cost to be realised by our health services of the necessary response to it.

Many routine appointments and surgeries were delayed and delayed. There is a backlog of tasks that must now be tackled. Out of the frying pan and into the fire? It is certainly a major challenge across health services but far from an insurmountable one.

The aims of ICSs, in creating a joined-up health service which thrives amid mutual knowledge sharing and understanding, will create the necessary efficiencies in process to combat these delays.

There are positive lessons in the healthcare sector to be gleaned from the pandemic. The pooling of resources and talents kept health services afloat at a time of previously unimaginable strain. Putting those lessons and experiences to effective use will stand ICSs in good stead.

We explore how ICSs drive improved patient experiences and outcomes in our latest white paper, Integrated care systems and the role of technology to support patients across the UK. You can download your free copy here.

Planning and scheduling the nursing workforce during the pandemic

Like so many industries and bodies, the NHS had to adapt in several ways during the Covid pandemic. The frontline of its efforts to tackle the virus made the headlines, but away from Covid wards there was a necessity for the NHS to adapt its processes and practices around the threat posed.

One such example regards district nursing – how was the NHS able to effectively and efficiently plan and schedule its nursing workforce in the face of meeting the challenge of delivering vital services away from hospitals?

In short, there was something of a struggle across some NHS Trusts to meet this challenge. The usual routine of bringing vulnerable patients into the hospital environment for the administration of care had to be reviewed in order to reduce the risk of exposure to Covid for such patients. This meant putting more nurses out on the road to deliver care in residences and care homes.

This change also fulfils part of the NHS’s Long Term Plan:

“Over the next 10 years, health and care will change significantly. We have a roadmap in the NHS Long Term Plan which sets out a new service model for the 21st century: increasing care in the community; redesigning and reducing pressure on emergency hospital services; more personalised care; digitally enabled primary and outpatient care; and a focus on population health and reducing health inequalities.”

NHS People Plan 2019

Increased demands for NHS Trusts

There was a sudden increase in demand for domestic patient visits thrust upon NHS Trusts with the Covid pandemic, meaning that processes and protocols had to be drawn up and adhered to in a short space of time.

The process of planning and scheduling district nurses to carry out these additional tasks meant that a vast number of clinical hours had to be diverted to scheduling and planning. On top of that, there was the inevitable rescheduling of appointments to contend with, too.

This is a largely manual process at present for many NHS Trusts, with others relying on old software which isn’t suitable for handling the modern scheduling demands of district nursing.

Operating hundreds of nurses to fulfil thousands of appointments in an efficient and effective manner is a huge undertaking. Doing this manually requires a monumental effort on the part of those responsible and using outdated software only makes the challenge harder.

Furthermore, each appointment must also take into consideration the skillset of the nurse conducting the appointment, ensuring that they are appropriately qualified to undertake the task. This requires careful planning and oversight and was a process that could be shattered in an instant with a positive Covid test for a district nurse.

Operating this manually, simply put, is unsustainable given the hours being diverted to it, the strain of efficiently managing the workloads of every district nurse and the requirement to consider each nurse’s competency for each visit. So, there is an opportunity to implement new technological systems which will bring about lasting benefits – the healthcare world will be a different place even once Covid is a memory.

Benefits of automated planning and scheduling software for NHS nursing

Automated planning and scheduling software can bring about a multitude of benefits for NHS district nursing including:

Reducing the clinical time spent on scheduling appointments

Automating the process massively reduces the workload, leaving administrative time to focus on exceptions

Reducing travel time and expenditure

Efficiently scheduling district nurses to maximise the number of appointments they can fulfil reduces the burden on the Trust by ensuring each nurse is fulfilling as many appointments as possible

Enabling demand and capacity modelling

Identifying demand gaps and knowing exactly how many district nurses are required at any given time based on actual demand

Supporting the identification of skill gaps

Spotting skill shortages based on future demand means a proactive and accurate approach to future workforce training and recruitment can be adopted

Meeting Lone Working Policy requirements

Where staff are working alone there is the potential for them to face hostile situations; having a robust system in place enables them to raise an alarm where such scenarios arise

Meeting requirements and patient demand

Increasing assurance that service delivery is meeting the requirements and needs of patient demand through automation. Reports can be generated to see the effectiveness of service delivery and to identify any shortfalls in staffing required to deliver services in line with patient demand

Reduction in missed or delayed visits (and associated clinical incidents)

By efficiently planning rosters, travel time allowances can be factored in, lowering the risk of external factors disrupting your schedule and making it more likely that appointments are met, reducing the risk of clinical incidents occurring as a result of staff scheduling

Improved communications with patients and carers for visits

Automate messaging through your system to inform patients and guide nurses

All these benefits from a system can be used to shape a more consistent and reliable future for NHS Trusts in delivering vital services.

CACI works across the UK with community care teams who use our Cygnum software to help deliver a huge range of centrally and domestically located services, helping to keep vital care and community services running. The software is also used by the Care Quality Commission to schedule their inspection workforce.

Data is no use to NHS organisations without the expertise and tools to make it actionable

Data has become more and more significant in all industries and settings. The NHS is no exception. With a huge amount of patient, service and performance data at its disposal, there should be a wealth of insight available to help shape patient care and develop the best services in every community.

But there’s a very important caveat. Everyone knows that raw data doesn’t provide actionable information. That’s why it’s generally issued in the form of reports. But what do the reports tell you?

Reporting on data is not the same as generating meaningful and transformative insight from it.

It’s common for NHS organisations to produce reports that list statistics and objects without the context or perspective that could give them meaning as a basis for decisions. These reports can tell us what has happened and provide headline figures for costs, volumes and timeframes, but they don’t reveal insight.

Drawing insight from data means looking at it through a new lens. It could mean evaluating how past performance could influence future behaviours and decisions. It could mean modelling multiple hypothetical scenarios to decide the best approach from several options.

Data reporting is a valid exercise when you’re monitoring performance against fixed objectives. But it’s generally a historical, static activity. The data insight that NHS organisations need is about planning for the future and adjusting programmes in-flight to reflect the latest information and evolving patient needs. It’s about scenario modelling. It’s about bringing together different datasets, to gain more and more detailed and specific understanding of the causes of outcomes and what influences them. This kind of data insight is truly transformative because it allows NHS organisations to continually scrutinise, optimise and innovate in their services and care.

The impact of true insight on NHS services

Sarah Culkin, Interim Head of the Analytics Unit at NHSX, and Sukhmeet Panesar, Deputy Director within NHS England and NHS Improvement’s Data, Analysis and Intelligence Service describe the impact of data insight: “Knowledge is power. In healthcare, it is often life-saving. The NHS generates a huge amount of data which can be analysed and used to drive improvements in care and how services are run. Ultimately, data analysis results in improved patient outcomes and experience, as well as optimal use of NHS resources.”

Trusts and NHS service providers know that data is valuable. Many have already invested in data solutions and tools designed to store and analyse information. But not all are generating powerful and potentially life-saving insight. Digital insight for healthcare is a constantly evolving field, with new tools and technologies emerging to extract more relevant information. It can be hard to keep pace with the range of data resources on offer and to know how to prioritise system development and investment.

Acquiring and acting on insight demands data literacy in teams

Sarah Culkin and Sukhmeet Panesar highlight another key issue that affects many NHS organisations in their quest to use data to improve services: “In general, the NHS is failing to make the most of its data because there are not enough people with the right analytical skills to make sense of the information being collected.”

Data insight and analytics is a fast-evolving field. Without training, mentoring and support from specialists who understand the NHS environment as well as the potential of data, NHS managers and analysts cannot make informed decisions and harness the data they have to best effect. Education and skills are key – both for general data literacy in NHS clinical, management, operations and finance teams, and for analytics and technology in the data science teams who support them.

With all the data you collect, are you making the most of it to support crucial trust or service decisions and to deliver responsive, patient-centric care that meets real-time needs?

If you’d like to find out more about CACI’s Data Maturity Assessment service, or our data and analytics training, please get in touch. It’s all part of our HISC (Healthcare Insight Success Cycle) data optimisation approach for NHS organisations.

Is knowledge and skills a barriers to transformative insight for your NHS organisation? Working with a specialist NHS data transformation partner could help you achieve best value from your data and budgets.

Find out how CACI’s healthcare team can provide advice on developing and maintaining your technology and offer staff training for data literacy and skills, so you can sustain your data journey from within. For further information, visit or website or get in touch with our NHS client team.