Somerset NHS Foundation Trust chooses Synergy as its costing solution

Challenge

Data insights

Management reporting around patient admin data had become cumbersome and slow, leading to poor and often inaccurate reporting. Resource was often spent fixing current problems, rather than finding new solutions and previous attempts at building an in-house data warehouse had failed. Royal Salford NHS needed a single source of reliable and accurate data that they could gain real insight from.

Solution

CACI’s InView data warehouse provides a single source of information from across PAS, radiology, pathology and EPR modules, data extraction and loading is fully automated, and reports produced daily using SAP BusinessObjects. Qlik dashboards are also used in A&E, offering a live view and analysis of patient data with predictive capabilities.

Results

The role of data has completely changed. Time is now spent analysing results and developing innovative approaches to data handling to drive real-time insights. A&E can predict patient attendance, likely arrival modes and emergency admissions numbers, per weekday and hour. The self-serve model has helped greater engagement and understanding from all departments.

Testimonial

Data quality was a major concern – not any more. A single source of all trust data, with easy to use reporting and visual analysis, has given us huge potential to accurately analyse, predict and improve clinical outcomes.

Joseph Frost

Head of Business Intelligence, Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust

Case study

Data solutions for Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh NHS Foundation Trust

Summary

Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (WWL) are a major acute and community trust dedicated to providing the best possible healthcare. Operating across five hospital sites and numerous community locations, they invest around £300m each year in order to design their services around the needs of their patients.

Company size

4,600+

Industry

Healthcare

Products used

Challenge

WWL saw an opportunity for change. After years of working stuck between two data warehouse versions, the WWL team were consumed by delays, hours of manual processing and a solution that was unreliable and not fit for purpose. As Mark Singleton, Associate Director of IM&T at the Trust would later describe: “the future didn’t look bright” — they needed something better.

As increasing mergers and collaboration between trusts was starting to take place, the business case for a new solution emerged — one that would meet all of their requirements, starting with a single version of the truth.

WWL looked at their options, knowing they needed a single data warehouse solution and while in the past this may have been done in house, the Trust concluded this wouldn’t meet the timeframe objectives, and with that in mind went out to tender for a partner to help bring in this solution.

Solution

CACI were initially appointed by WWL to implement their proposed solution: InView Express.

The InView data warehouse solution was specifically designed for the NHS market and when CACI were appointed by WWL, it had already been implemented in many trusts across the UK.

WWL could see the design of InView had incorporated the complexities required for an NHS data warehouse. It would allow them to produce the Trust’s national datasets and statutory returns and bring all siloed data sources into a single data warehouse, providing an accurate and co-ordinated view of the Trust’s services.

Plus, with the intuitive environment of InView, users across the Trust would be able view and analyse the data easily, and subsequently make effective decisions in an efficient way.

Thinking of the future ahead, WWL took the decision to take on all of the InView modules at the beginning, providing the capability to grow as they took on new data sources. This would soon provide to be an invaluable decision.

After benefiting from the InView solution for a few years and expanding its use, a new challenge appeared: WWL were to take on Community and Mental Health services, and this was a significant increase to their services and data.

Mark Singleton, Associate Director of IM&T at WWL, explains: “It’s not everyday that you’re being asked to grow services by 20-25%”, and that taking on these new areas would bring with it many different national datasets that the Trust had never dealt with before.

With additional returns and outputs due in a short space of time, WWL turned to CACI’s experience in working with community data to help them develop these new datasets in order to meet the national standard.

Results

Since implementing InView and later expanding it to support the new Trust requirements, WWL now have a reliable foundation which frees up capacity to focus on analysis of data and more strategic goals.

The team no longer spend time troubleshooting issues or hours processing data manually and can take on proactive improvements in house such as developing SQL.

WWL are making the most of the robustness of InView, with their database projected to be almost 2TB by 2021. For the Trust this is invaluable, as with some tables containing over 150 million records, they are able to record and manage vast amounts of historical data.

As CACI has invested and improved InView over the past few years, WWL are also utilising the regular updates in order to continually improve and evolve their reporting. Recently WWL have been looking at semantic reporting as a next step to improving the consolidated view of data across the Trust and will be further enhancing their deployment by using the new InView Extensions functionality

By optimising their use of InView, focusing on data analysis and striving to be a data-driven organisation through continual improvements, WWL are empowered to make efficiency savings, and improve the quality of care for patients across Wigan.

Case study

Data solutions and digital transformation at North Bristol NHS Trust

Summary

As one of the largest hospital trusts in the UK with an annual turnover of £532 million, North Bristol NHS Trust (NBT) recognised the value that implementing new data architecture and deploying business intelligence software would have on wider business outcomes. To achieve this, they enlisted a trusted data partner, CACI.

Industry

Healthcare

Products used

Challenge

NBT was struggling with NHS statutory changes, reporting pressures, disparate systems and data quality overheads. In order to solve these challenges, NBT looked to implement a Trust-wide data warehouse and business intelligence solution.

In addition to the data warehousing solution, NBT had many disparate reporting tool options, and it was important to implement one solution where any member of staff could go to source any report or dashboard output.

Following implementation, NBT needed the solution to be maintained under a managed service offering but built in a way to ensure self-sufficiency in the Trust’s team, so that the solution could be extended in line with new and changed requirements

Solution

NBT chose CACI to provide and implement a new data architecture including a Trust-wide data warehouse solution, managed service support, and deployment of leading business intelligence (BI) software.

The solution integrates a vast quantity of data from many disparate sources including administrative, clinical and finance systems. Additionally, the solution incorporates business logic in order to calculate and model the Trust’s income. The solution is fully maintained by CACI through the provision of a managed service and a structured product release schedule.

The solution incorporates a layered database architecture incorporating integration, Operational Data Store, translation, star schema and semantic data mart layers. This design reduces ongoing maintenance costs and increases flexibility to new requirements or interface changes.

Historical data integrity is preserved through the implementation of an efficient, slowly changing dimensions design, and a full data quality process is built into the data flow enabling reporting and resolution of data quality issues. Both row and column-level security governance is built into the design along with NHS privacy measures.

The logical design of the solution along with its interfaces is documented along with physical database design features to achieve optimal performance on the operating platform.

Data was migrated and re-factored from legacy solutions to maintain data history, and particular attention was made to how the cut-over point was implemented.

NBT benefited from CACI’s experience in promoting outcome-based dashboards for the healthcare sector. This enabled NBT to set up the best possible framework and method for rollout of BI analytics across the organisation, ensuring high stakeholder engagement for outcome alignment and adoption of change. Experience in the use of data science has allowed the Trust to further exploit its data to help improve patient outcomes through accurate predictions.

Results

Since implementation, NBT has been able to centralise its BI function and source all data through the single-governed version of the truth. It has ensured data readiness, completeness and accuracy is in place and always available for reporting.

NBT’s income is comprehensively calculated on a daily basis, with data quality issues managed and corrected in a timely fashion. The accuracy and completeness of this process has delivered a significant financial benefit to the Trust and an early return on investment.

Data is readily available and accessible to stakeholders across the Trust via a centralised portal, with most data updated on a daily basis and some updated every two minutes, allowing near real-time decision making.

Following a jointly executed project, training and knowledge transfer, the NBT team are fully empowered and self-sufficient in the use and future expansion of the solution. This covers construction of analytics and addition of new data sources.

Through the innovative design of the CACI solution, NBT benefits from a fully-maintained core product, yet retain the flexibility to expand the solution to meet local and future needs (e.g. adding new data attributes, entities and rules).

NBT are part of the CACI NHS User Community and benefit from the sharing of content and ideas with other trusts, as well as benefitting from CACI’s commitment to and investment in the NHS.

Testimonial

They were able to see on arrival and refreshed every two minutes, the wait time in ED, attendances, discharges and performance… and they could see that information benchmarked against how other EDs were performing as well. We’d never been able to do that before. For the consultants, it has completely changed their approach to work. It’s become a platform on which we intend to build further real time reporting.

David Hale

Assistant Director of Informatics: Business Intelligence, IM&T
North Bristol NHS Trust

Case study

Power BI migration & implementation process & outcomes for North Bristol Trust (NBT) – pt1

Summary

When North Bristol Trust (NBT) was tasked with migrating their existing reporting tool to Power BI, CACI was their trusted partner that supported the successful production of a migration readiness package. This readiness package included a detailed report of all quantitative and qualitative findings, a newfound understanding of existing functions and capabilities, a reassessment of future requirements and definitive progression of next steps in the Trust’s migration from business case creation to sign-off.

NBT possessed over 100 reports in their pre-existing analytics platform, ranging from list-based for front line, operational workers to more backend, dashboard and analysis reports for email distribution. Once these reports needed to move from NBT’s pre-existing system to Power BI, the Trust wanted to understand and reconsider their design, particularly its contents and data structure.

Andrew Elliott, Head of Data Analytics at North Bristol Trust, has handled analytics platform outputs and has been a key player in the Trust’s Power BI migration.

Company size

13,000+

Industry

Healthcare

Products used

Power BI

Challenge

The first course of action identified for NBT was the need to improve efficiency when creating reports. This was a multi-step action, not simply addressing the speed at which reports are updated, but the efficiency and maintenance of data.

To achieve this, Andrew’s team revisited their hospital data analysis practices to ensure they would remain up-to-date, reliable and accurate.

Solution

This process took the Trust substantial time and input from CACI, with Richard Brennan, CACI’s Principal Consultant, working on the mapping process and providing ongoing support to Andrew’s team.

Determining the best data design followed this. Andrew’s team had ambitions on what the Trust wanted to do with their data, an especially crucial factor being that through Power BI, other analysts from across the hospital could be brought on board.

In the weeks prior to going live, Andrew’s team liaised with key individuals across the Trust on upcoming reports, Power BI was displayed on the intranet’s homepage and a Power BI developer group was established for updates from Andrew’s team, their use of Power BI and best practice sharing.

Once the reports were signed off as tested, they were moved into the appropriate workspace apps for users. A soft launch took place prior to go-live to ensure comfortability of using Power BI and address any final issues. Finally, users were added to groups for immediate access and the original platform was turned off, marking the official introduction of Power BI.

The diversity of requirements and revisiting the data design were two pivotal focal points to be reprioritised over the course of the implementation.

The ambition around optimised data design was initially obfuscated due to the comparatively little data available from clinical divisions and departments across the hospital that used Excel. This prompted Andrew and his team to encourage the use of one cohesive reporting platform to ensure data sufficiency, accuracy and reliability, creating an environment that analysts would engage with and host their reporting on.

The immense size of this ambition quickly became clear to the Trust, particularly regarding the data scope, the systems it took from, the amount of available data and the data used by divisional analysts. Upon further investigation into data sources, an added layer of complexity came to be: rebuilding all the data sources into a new data model would be impossible to achieve by the stringent deadline. With CACI’s help, however, the situation took a positive turn.

“CACI provided helpful support and advice [during this time], even during times where I think our project had gone from a green to an amber stage where we were coming into the last couple of months,” Andrew shared. “CACI was incredibly supportive of the decisions that we were making, also contributing to those decisions themselves.”

Results

Richard’s Power BI configuration set up Andrew’s team for a successful first few weeks of post-go-live, with the team receiving about 600 hits on reports in the first two days post-go-live and approximately 60 support requests.

According to Andrew, Richard’s continued support in demonstrating any changes to the semantic models, identifying any issues with uploading data or explaining the environment’s functions has been particularly useful.

“We had Richard in the background with any small changes that we wanted to do with the data loads or semantic models, and that support was useful in the run-up and afterwards, because we’ve watched how to look after this system as Richard has built it, but when you’re actually live and you’ve got to look after yourself, it’s nice to have that bit of hand-holding as you learn,” he explained.

NBT has presently moved out of the post-go-live period of constant close monitoring and rapid issue resolution towards a business-as-usual position. Plans for future enhancements can now be reviewed, along with an assessment of the Trust’s future and the potential of reaching a similar outcome with NBT’s partner, UHBW, enabling both data teams to identically view data across Trusts and share it seamlessly.

The project’s success also led to Andrew and his team being nominated by NBT’s Operations leadership for their annual staff award, an internal mark of excellence and recognition for a project well-delivered.

Testimonial

This project has been a lot of hard work, but it’s been a great project and fantastic to work with [CACI], I really enjoyed it and [CACI] brought a lot of experience and expertise to the vision and ambition that we had, so I really appreciate it.

Andrew Elliott

Head of Data Analytics at North Bristol Trust

Case study

United Lincolnshire increases income through costing analysis

NHS United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust

Summary

United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust is one of the largest trusts in the country. It provides a comprehensive range of hospital-based medical, surgical, paediatric, obstetric and gynaecological services to the people of Lincolnshire and beyond, through three main hospitals and 90 other locations.

With a turnover of more than £400m each year, United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust invests millions in improving clinical services by replacing and upgrading medical equipment, modernising facilities and improving IT infrastructure.

To ensure maximum benefits from these investments, costing is a business-critical issue. We spoke to Assistant Finance Manager, Robin Solly at United Lincolnshire on how the use of CACI’s flagship solution, Synergy 4, is helping them reach their goals.

Company size

9,500

Industry

Healthcare

Products used

Challenge

Costing

For United Lincolnshire Hospital Trust, costing had always been an exercise undertaken purely for the purpose of the national cost collection. For the teams involved, the manual process of extracting the data and getting the required outputs was extremely difficult, meaning the data was rarely used for operational or strategic purposes.

Managing change

A new push for change came as the mandated costing requirements for acute trusts changed and CACI was appointed to deliver a solution that would enable all of these improvements.

Solution

Once CACI had identified Synergy 4 as the best solution, a nine-month implementation phase began.

Robin Solly from United Lincolnshire’s finance team commented on the approach that was taken to ensure the solution was built with the trust in mind:

“Our implementation phase had superb on-site support from a CACI consultant, who spent considerable time in understanding our organisation so that the construct of our costing model reflected the way in which the Trust’s activity is delivered.”

Ease of use for the costing practitioner was an important aspect to ensure the Trust could get maximum benefit in an efficient way. Synergy was implemented for the trust to be able to automate processes that had previously been manual, time consuming exercises, which in turn removed a significant amount of time from the costing process.

Results

Since the implementation of Synergy 4, the Trust has been able to produce quarterly PLICS reporting. A summarised model of income against expenditure, by specialty and point-of-delivery has been made available to clinical service managers and patient level outputs available to local finance teams.

Robin explained that the ability to drill down into the detail helped support the key insights revealed at the summary level:

Hand holding up a healthcare cross icon surrounded by healthcare word cloud and symbols

“PLICS data is now a key analysis tool used in our acute service review process with a number of specialties specifically requesting detailed patient level financial analysis to understand which clinical activities are generating a positive / negative contribution margin and why.”

Robin went on to recount a recent example of a department seeing direct benefits from this solution:

“There was the specialty who, as a result of our patient level analysis, realised that a whole strata of their activity was not being charged to our commissioners due to an administration error that precluded its inclusion in our SLAM reports. Without PLICS, this would not have happened and has resulted in substantial additional income for the Trust.”

Empowered with detailed insights, the United Lincolnshire Hospital trust continue to work with CACI on how they can take further steps to generate more insight from their data and improve outcomes across the trust.

Case study

A standardised data warehouse designed for current and future NHS Trust needs

Summary

Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust provides acute health care services from Torbay Hospital, along with community health services and adult social care. It was the first Trust in England to integrate hospital and community care with social care.

The Trust has around 6,500 staff and 800 volunteers. It runs Torbay Hospital as well as five community hospitals and other local clinics. It provides health and social care to the local population, with around 500,000 face-to-face contacts in patients’ homes and communities each year, serving a resident population of approximately 286,000 people, plus about 100,000 holiday visitors at any one time in the summer season.

Company Size

6,000+

Industry

Healthcare

Products Used

Challenge

South Devon and Torbay has used InView for many years, with the original solution implemented in 2006. More recently, the Trust has experienced challenging times in its IT division, with tight budgets limiting staff and resources. This led to key systems becoming outdated, through lack of investment in upgrades and system replacements.

The resourceful IT team used workarounds and in-house development to bridge gaps and connect systems, to draw essential clinical and financial insight from the Trust’s data, stored in disparate sources.

Head of Data Engineering, Stephen Judd says: “On top of this, since Covid, there have been big organisational changes in the Trust, including new wards, which affected the data we work with. And a lot of our lookup tables were based on old national standards. Although we had a made series of updates to the standards and data dictionary, our Patient Administration System (PAS) and InView hadn’t caught up.”

In 2020, Torbay and South Devon received funding to upgrade their SQL server and jumped at the chance. Stephen Judd says: “We knew we needed to upgrade the InView system as well and seized the opportunity to present a business case for this. It was accepted – but we needed to implement by the end of the financial year – less than four months away. Normally, we would have planned twice as long for this type of data warehouse project.”

Tight budgets

Limited staff and resource

Out of date systems

Solution

CACI agreed to work with Stephen and his team to deliver a new InView data warehouse against the tight deadline. Stephen explains: “CACI provided overall consultancy to plan the data warehouse migration. With many vacancies in our data team, we also used CACI consultants to backfill. Due to time and resource constraints, we didn’t have as much engagement with the information team and data team as we wanted. Moreover, some of our old source systems and extracts didn’t have an Information Asset Owner or anyone who understood the data architecture fully. We had to do a lot of interrogation analysis to bridge this knowledge gap. We wouldn’t have been able to deliver the project without CACI’s support with this.”

CACI’s consultants worked with Stephen’s team to implement the latest version of the InView data warehouse for healthcare organisations. It brings together feeds from in-patient, outpatient, critical care, the old maternity system, neo-natal and paediatric and some community and extended data (from InfoFlex) that adds richness and detail to patient records – for example, information from GP discharge letters.

Torbay and South Devon’s core project embraced the core data feeds they knew best. Stephen’s team set a stretch goal to bring some of the Trust’s community data in. This was particularly challenging, as it was poorly defined and spread over eight systems.

Stephen says: “Some of the services had started setting up their own booking systems outside our main PAS and using InfoFlex. Drawing on CACI’s expertise and resources, we were able to merge these in, which has made our data more complete and accurate again.”

To improve outputs and reporting, the team replaced a daily, fixed format export routine originally written in the 1980s. They built new feeds for demographic, inpatient and outpatient data from the SWIFT bed management system.

Results

Torbay and South Devon NHS Trust could have chosen to build its own custom solution. But InView has a powerful advantage. Stephen explains: “If we create anything bespoke, we have to support it. And we don’t have capacity.”

There has been a big shift because of Covid – the NHS is moving towards a more standardised national view of income. “InView means we can accommodate national SUS calculations and keep pace as our obligations increase each year, because it uses a recognised best practice approach. With InView, we have a proven, standard platform and can make local adjustments for a perfect fit to our organisation,” says Stephen.

For ongoing support, CACI’s team is responsible for upgrades and loading new tariffs. Stephen can focus his own engineers on getting the data right. This is key, because some of NHS England’s payment to the Trust relies on it. Stephen gives an example: “We discovered that a percentage of our outpatient activity had the wrong consultant speciality, which potentially reduces our national NHS income. With CACI maintaining InView, I have the resources to investigate and rectify that type of issue.

Female carer caring for elderly woman in a wheelchair in outdoor space

“The beauty of working with CACI is that they take ownership of everything they promise in the scope of the agreement, and fix it. They provided excellent project management. I didn’t have to chase up work or check every detail – you can only do that with real trust in the team’s capability and judgement to escalate when needed.

“The InView data warehouse is a product that will last us ten or more years – it’s our one source of data for all key reporting so it’s a critical solution for the Trust. Amongst the many programmes I’m responsible for, it was a relief not to have to worry about this one, because CACI has earned our trust and confidence throughout a long working relationship. CACI’s engineers are extremely experienced and were able to jump in, ask intelligent questions, and deal with unfamiliar and unusual data feeds and systems! The project manager provided excellent communication throughout, so I didn’t need to intervene and always knew the latest status and progress.”

Peter Sheard, IT Programme Manager, Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust

Testimonial

I’d be happy to recommend this product to any other NHS Trust. InView gives us the flexibility to work around a stable core product — and the support from CACI is outstanding.

Stephen Judd

Informatics: Head of Data Engineering – Strategy and Improvement, Torbay and Devon NHS Foundation Trust

Case study

Power BI migration and implementation process and outcomes for North Bristol Trust (NBT) – part 2

Summary

Company size

13,000+

Industry

Healthcare

Products used

Power BI

Challenge

Andrew Elliott, Head of Data Analytics at North Bristol Trust, has handled analytics platform outputs and has been a key player in the Trust’s Power BI migration.

The first course of action identified for NBT was the need to improve efficiency when creating reports. This was a multi-step action, not simply addressing the speed at which reports are updated, but the efficiency and maintenance of data.

To achieve this, Andrew’s team revisited their hospital data analysis practices to ensure they would remain up-to-date, reliable and accurate.

There was also an emphasis on redesigning the data models that fed the reports to meet requirements. This required a substantial amount of analysis to understand where data was coming from and what NBT was doing with that data to display the report. Once this analysis was complete, NBT had to consider how it could be streamlined to become more efficient and recreate that logic in a new location within their data warehouse.

With these needs in consideration, Andrew’s team reached a consensus on the requirement for a new reporting database, as well as a redesign of the data models that would facilitate the moving of their reporting tool.

Solution

This process took the Trust a lot of time and input from CACI to execute, as the initial input stages were focused on providing business knowledge and data understanding, with CACI possessing the technical knowledge. CACI’s Richard Brennan, Principal Consultant, worked on the mapping process and provided ongoing support to Andrew’s team.

Determining the best design for that data followed this. Andrew’s team had ambitions on what the Trust wanted to do with their data, one of which was knowing that through Power BI, other analysts from across the hospital could be brought on board. The board was an especially important and crucial factor as NBT approached the Power BI go-live date. For Andrew’s team, this included ensuring alignment on decision-making, gaining organisation-wide buy-in and keeping motivation up.

“We weren’t putting our head in the sand, we were very honest with any issues that we had and [the board was] immensely helpful in their responses, particularly around communication,” Andrew shared.

In the weeks prior to going live, Andrew’s team liaised with key individuals in the Trust across various departments and divisions on the status of upcoming reports. Power BI also began to be displayed on the intranet’s homepage of the intranet for collective awareness on Power BI going live. NBT followed an additional CACI recommendation of forming a Power BI developer group for regular meetings to take place on what Andrew’s team was doing, how they were using Power BI, encourage others to use Power BI and share best practises.

All licenses were in place and once the reports were signed off as tested, they were moved into the appropriate workspace apps for users. A soft launch using advanced functionality for several areas took place a week prior to go-live to ensure comfortability of using Power BI and iron out any final issues before eradicating their pre-existing BI tool. The final step was adding users to groups for immediate access and turning off the original platform.

By Friday afternoon, users were given access while the original platform remained available over the weekend, and by Monday morning, a blocking page prohibiting access was implemented, marking the official introduction of Power BI.

The diversity of requirements and revisiting the data design were two pivotal focal points to be reprioritised over the course of the implementation.

The ambition around optimised data design was initially obfuscated due to the comparatively little data available from various clinical divisions and departments across the hospital that used Excel. This prompted Andrew and his team to encourage the use of one cohesive reporting platform to ensure data sufficiency, accuracy and reliability, creating an environment that analysts would engage with and host their reporting on and unite users.

The immense size of this ambition quickly became clear to the Trust, particularly regarding the data scope, the systems it took from, the amount of available data and the data that was also being used by divisional analysts. The Trust also acknowledged the fixed date by which this project had to be completed. Upon further investigation into the data sources, an added layer of complexity came to be: rebuilding all the data sources into a new data model would not be possible to achieve by the stringent deadline. With CACI’s help, however, the situation took a positive turn.

Results

Richard’s Power BI configuration has set up Andrew’s team for a successful first few weeks of post-go-live, with the team receiving about 600 hits on reports in the first two days post-go-live and receiving approximately 60 support requests (mainly access requests or general functionality enquiries). While some minor accuracy issues with outpatients arose and were resolved quickly, the reporting has remained accurate and was very well received by the end users.

That brings us to present day, where NBT has moved out of the post-go-live period of constant close monitoring and rapid issue resolution towards a business-as-usual position. Plans for future enhancements to the environment and the data behind it can now be reviewed, along with an assessment of the Trust’s future and the potential of reaching a similar outcome with NBT’s partner, UHBW, enabling both data teams to have the same view of data across Trusts and share it seamlessly. The project’s success also led to Andrew and his team being nominated by NBT’s Operations leadership for their annual staff award, an internal mark of excellence and recognition for a project well delivered.

Testimonial

This project has been a lot of hard work, but it’s been a great project and fantastic to work with CACI. I really enjoyed it and CACI brought a lot of experience and expertise to the vision and ambition that we had, so I really appreciate it.

Andrew Elliott

Head of Data Analytics at North Bristol Trust

Case study

Oxford Health save time and funding through detailed data analysis

Summary

Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust operates across a large region of the South West of England providing physical, mental health and social care.

As a valued customer of CACI, we spoke to Head of Costing, Paul Vincent about some of the challenges his team faced and the improvements they’ve made through effective use of their costing solution Synergy 4.

Company size

10,000+

Industry

Healthcare

Products used

Challenge

The teams at Oxford Health were burdened with time consuming cost calculations that could only be produced at a high level – nowhere near their requirements for team and patient level activity-based costing.

Due to the work involved, Paul describes the costing process as being too admin heavy.

“Most of the costings were produced using excel and time was spent processing the data rather than analysing the data.”
Paul Vincent, Head of Costing, Oxford Health

When CACI were appointed, a key deliverable was to implement a solution that allowed Oxford Health to focus on data analysis in order to take actions to improve apportionment and allocation of money, as well as to kick start improving activity data by identifying gaps or lack of recording.

Solution

In order to meet the core requirements of an efficient alternative to costing calculations, as well as providing opportunities to analyse the data and gain insight, CACI’s proposed solution was Synergy4.

An NHSI Healthcare Costing Standards compliant, patient level costing solution for end-to-end reporting and management.

As one of the hurdles Oxford Health was facing was that they weren’t able to report at a detailed level, Synergy would help the trust overcome this challenge by allowing activity to be costed at the lowest level and mapping to the trust’s own user defined hierarches to produce the outputs they needed.

Paul told us this aspect has proven to be key for Oxford Health.

“The amount of detail that we can cost is extremely useful, if the activity data is robust, as we can cost by different criteria e.g. Referring GP and GP Practice, Consultant, Member of Staff that carried out the consultation, age and many more.”
Paul Vincent, Head of Costing, Oxford Health

Results

Since the implementation of Synergy4 Oxford Health have seen a number of improvements. The time saved on manual processing of the data mean they are now able to focus on data analysis and turn the insights into actions within the trust that directly impact funding.

Oxford Health continue work with CACI to maximise the benefits of Synergy and generate insights that help improve outcomes for staff and patients across the trust.

Testimonial

It is now easy to produce costing data by commissioner using patient activity data and we can therefore calculate if a contract is in surplus or deficit. This has helped us as a Trust to negotiate with our main commissioner for further funding. We can also compare costs by geographical areas for the same service using clinical team or postcode.

Paul Vincent

Head of Costing, Oxford Health

Case study

How Northern Ireland Trusts successfully adopted Synergy, CACI’s patient-level costing solution

Summary

Migrating to and developing a patient-level information and costing solution (PLICS) programme has been a prominent topic of conversation for the costing community in health and social for years now, especially following its successful adoption within other jurisdictions. Trusts and the Strategic Planning and Performance Group (SPPG) alike have recognised the value of integrating a PLICS programme to enhance analytical capabilities and the quality and granularity of health and social care (HSC) financial information. By integrating a PLICS programme, providers and commissioners can better understand how resources are used to identify opportunities for cost reduction, improved efficiencies and achieving clinical level ownership.

As an increasing number of Northern Ireland Trusts began reaching the end of their original costing systems’ lifetimes, and amidst a drive to deliver PLICS data as quickly as possible, a decision to initiate a tender process was made.

Although the tender process, managed by colleagues in the Business Services Organisation Procurement and Logistics Service (BSO PaLS), was lengthy, CACI’s patient level costing solution, Synergy, came out on top thanks to its cost efficiency and exceptional functionality, along with the CACI project team’s demonstrable understanding of the Northern Irish landscape.

Industry

Healthcare

Products used

Synergy

Challenge

Eilis Calvert, Head Accountant in Financial Performance within the Strategic Planning and Performance Group of the Department of Health, shared: “The project team at CACI was great at bringing people along this very challenging journey on a very tight deadline and keeping us all right, so that we were able to achieve what we needed to in that first year.”

Working with such large volumes of patient level data was unfamiliar territory for the costing teams, leading to them having to upskill in these areas. Patient level cost allocation only began (and through a new system) in 2023, changing the pre-existing costing methodology from what the teams had been using for several years prior. With a plethora of data to review and a new system to work with, the cost review challenge was substantially heightened.

The implementation of Synergy began in January 2023, with Trusts trained up on the new system within the year, including working on a pilot model and completing a cost submission. Despite Eilis recalling this time as one of intensity, she is proud of what the HSC costing community has achieved.

Solution

The scope of Northern Ireland Trusts differs from the NHS in other UK jurisdictions. While Northern Ireland Trusts leans heavily on the work of NHS England and NHS Wales in developing patient level methodology, Eilis recalls the significant work that had to go into developing methodology and guidance for other elements specific to Northern Ireland, such as social care and adapting datasets to fit the electronic patient data collected in Northern Ireland. Reporting requirements also differed for these Trusts, such as the inclusion of Programmes of Care.

CACI helped the Trusts overcome these differentiation challenges by developing additional guidance aspects and modifying the software to process data and report on the necessary capacity that would meet HSCNI’s unique needs. CACI’s project lead provided continuous support and advice through to the final cost submission being made. A constant flow of communication was maintained between CACI and the Trusts, ranging from ad-hoc calls to the creation and delivery of formal reports. CACI’s communicative approach ensured that a collective understanding was met across the Trusts, with Eilis sharing that CACI was: “very supportive of everyone’s individual needs while ensuring that the department received the consistency that it required.”

Results

According to Eilis, Synergy’s ability to deliver high-quality PLICS product and data insight with ease and flexibility would address each of the Northern Ireland Trusts’ needs, especially gaining a better understanding of their population. Previous systems costed in aggregate, resulting in a lack of visibility or granularity that Synergy could rectify. In addition, some Trusts previously needed to take additional steps to populate the necessary NI costing template following the completion of the costing process, which Synergy outputs directly and significantly reduces time for Trusts.

“Prior to Synergy, we used higher-level costing data, but the devil is in the detail, so getting that level of granularity was critical to help us to really understand the whole patient journey, especially as our healthcare system covers social care,” Eilis explained.

Working with CACI on the PLICS data was helpful, although not without its challenges. The Northern Ireland Trusts are continuing to work with CACI to further develop and implement individualised validation and cost review dashboards to ensure Trusts will be equipped to meet their needs and deadlines as they arise.

Case study

How InView regenerated Croydon Health Services’ data capabilities

Summary

Croydon Health Services NHS Trust is a mid-sized hospital in Croydon that provides acute and community care through services and departments ranging from A&E, adult and paediatric critical care to outpatient and inpatient treatment and community services.

Prior to partnering with CACI over a decade ago, the Trust did not have their own data warehouse. Their in-house and bespoke systems were built using tools like Microsoft Access and SQL Server, which challenged their ability to load their structured data properly and time-efficiently. As a result, the Trust conducted a tender to enlist support for this, and after gauging the simplicity and ease with which CACI could help them meet their data warehouse optimisation needs, established a partnership.

Company size

4,000+

Industry

Healthcare

Products used

Challenge

Croydon Health Services’ entire in-house, bespoke system had been run by one person. This presented a risk to the organisation, particularly in the event of any changes made to statutory submissions or to the Healthcare Resource Group (HRG).

Husein Kermali, Head of Information Systems at Croydon Health Services NHS Trust, explained the Trust’s thinking in opting for a more organised route that would guarantee their protection by working with an organisation as opposed to an individual to oversee the entire system.

“One of our reasons we chose to go with [an organisation-led] warehouse in the first place was so things like the HRG group, the statutory submissions and anything that comes online from us from an NHS perspective would be something that we knew that warehouse would be capable of delivering.”

Bespoke system only run by one person

At risk if any changes were made to statutory submissions or HRGs

Solution

The Trust implemented InView back in 2011-2012 as a one pass system. CACI created Extract, Transform & Load (ETL) processes through InView based on pre-existing system knowledge and an understanding of what Croydon Health Services endeavoured to do with their data from the point of partnership.

A few years later, in conjunction with their existing data provider, the Trust went from PIEDW extracts to Nautilus 835 extracts, which resulted in CACI taking over a significant amount of the ETL process for the Trust. The positive working relationship between the Trust and CACI built up the Trust’s confidence in the difference CACI could make for their data processing capabilities.

“We know that CACI is always there when we’ve got issues, we know that [CACI] knows the detailed processes very well. [CACI] also work for a multitude of Trusts… so they know they’ve seen all the issues that we’re having in other Trusts, and what all the Trusts are trying to do,” Husein explained. “I think with that kind of vision, [CACI] can see a lot more than we can. I think that makes CACI a great partner to be with.”

Results

When the CDS010 was retired and 011 E CDS came online a few years ago, Husein flagged that “if [the Trust] did that in-house, that would have been a lot of work.” According to Husein, CACI had the extracts ready for this through InView, CACI’s modular data platform, easing Croydon Health Services’ involvement in the process.

“With the simple product upgrade of InView, [CACI] had all the elements within their product already. We just had to populate the fields that we needed. The output that was delivered was then ECDS 011 compliant, which saved us a lot of time,” Husein continued. “[CACI] did all the testing… we just had to make sure that we filled in the elements that we needed for the easy desk submission, so that was amazing because it saved a lot of time.”

Croydon Health Services has also benefitted from being involved in the ETL process throughout its development by CACI. The supplementary documentation provided at the end of any piece of work with CACI has given the Trust unrestricted access to changes made through InView or ensuring that everything they wished to capture had indeed been included.

The Trust has applied their learnings from CACI’s processes to successfully implement their own data quality (DQ) reports and dashboards that highlight potential problems and look up issues through a warehouse load process. The processes followed by their Data Quality team have also ensured that when data now goes through to the data warehouse, those issues disappear.

Testimonial

We know that CACI is always there when we’ve got issues, we know that [CACI] knows the detailed processes very well. [CACI] also work for a multitude of Trusts… so they know they’ve seen all the issues that we’re having in other Trusts, and what all the Trusts are trying to do. I think with that kind of vision, [CACI] can see a lot more than we can. I think that makes CACI a great partner to be with.

Husein Kermali

Head of Information Systems, Croydon Health Services NHS Trust

Case study

How InView enhanced Stockport’s data collection & processing capabilities

Summary

When Stockport NHS Foundation Trust first looked to procure a data warehouse, they were adamant about choosing a provider with a proven track record and experience of delivering products and services to the NHS. Following recommendations and success stories from other users of CACI’s NHS data warehouse solution, InView, it was clear that a partnership with CACI would guarantee Stockport a smooth process with a mature and established provider.

Industry

Healthcare

Products used

Challenge

Stockport needed one platform that would contain all data in one place to simplify the collection process and help the team regain control of their data. Over the years, numerous reporting database tables evolved to the point that multiple individual servers were created. This resulted in many duplications with multiple databases across multiple tables, data not being consolidated or structured, analysts having to work across servers and inconsistent information being produced. Having one unified platform would ensure that everyone would pull data from the same source and would avoid analysts working in silos and creating their own new sources of data. A consolidated data platform would provide much needed resilience and structure.

Stockport also wanted to take control of their statutory data processing and reporting. They needed flexibility and control over their own data developments, including more automated data submissions and reporting.

Simplify process by having one platform to host all data

Issues with duplications in the database

Need more control over data processing and reporting

Solution

CACI’s InView equipped Stockport with a mature data platform that has defined all statutory returns and commissioning datasets. It supports the team’s existing grouping and pricing processes and significantly reduces their month end manual processing, freeing up their time to dedicate their efforts to additional data analysis instead.

Through InView, the team also gained access to a unique support desk headed by a team of CACI’s technical experts, ensuring that any issues arising at Stockport could be mitigated precisely and timely.

“You don’t normally get someone that could just as easily have developed the product on a support line. [Our CACI support lead] knows InView inside out… not only does he know the products, but he also knows NHS data quite well,” Rory MacDonald, Lead Analyst at Stockport, explained.

“We have a lot of confidence in the fact that CACI’s [team of customer care individuals] understand NHS data and keep up to date on policy decisions to be able to respond quickly to changes,” Debbie Hope, Chief Data Officer at Stockport, continued.

Stockport was also able to identify gaps in the recording of patient observations, with a customised InView module specially developed by another one of CACI’s delivery support leads to enhance Stockport’s reporting capabilities. Through InView, the team could rest assured that all statutory elements would be addressed and that building any added functionalities within the platform would be done quickly and easily.

The latest enhancement that CACI’s delivery support lead is developing for Stockport is for their audiology data extraction and collection, whereby data is extracted from their system and data quality reports are being created to find any issues. This helps Stockport streamline some of their diagnostic waiting times reporting.

Results

According to Rory, CACI’s consultancy and support has far exceeded the organisation’s expectations. “The consultants were all really good in terms of both their technical expertise and dynamic advice,” he commented.

There was a noticeable reduction in the overall time spent processing overnight. After setting up a delta load, Stockport realised that every piece of information in their system dating back from the 1980s was being copied over. This process took progressively longer each day because the amount of data being copied over was continuously increasing. They worked with CACI on setting up a delta load where they could identify using interface messages, pull any necessary information and load it into the data warehouse, which significantly sped up the processing time.

“It’s available to be reported on from early in the morning,” Rory explained.

The enhanced data warehouse solution allowed Stockport to produce their own national CDS extracts. “We were reliant on and restricted to the pace of our PAS supplier previously for the development of those extracts when there were national changes,” Debbie explained. “We’ve removed that reliance and taken full control of those national extracts.”

Stockport was also able to move away from manually processing commissioner assignment within the PAS system. “It was a very manual process for using the contracting functionality within our patient administration system to assign the Commissioner for who pays for a particular piece of activity,” Rory explained. “Now that we’ve got all the national commissioner assignment method (CAM) rules written in the data warehouse, we’ve been able to switch off the functionality on the PAS system and transform the work of our data quality team.”

The Trust’s future ambitions include completely switching off all of the old servers with the legacy reporting databases so that the organisation can have only one development server and one production server for the data warehouse. They are also keen to increase the provision of real-time reporting. CACI will continue to support Stockport by analysing patient flow and frequently refreshing in-patient data to help Stockport understand exactly who is in the hospital at that time, what service they may be waiting for and how waiting times can be reduced, and overall support with the maintenance of their data warehouse.

Testimonial

We have a lot of confidence in the fact that CACI’s [team of customer care individuals] understand NHS data and keep up to date on policy decisions to be able to respond quickly to changes.

Debbie Hope

Chief Data Officer, NHS Stockport Foundation Trust

Case study

Trust-wide insight for service improvement from Synergy 4 PLICS solution investment

NHS Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust

Summary

Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust (CPFT) is an NHS health and social care organisation that provides services in inpatient, community and primary care settings. The Trust’s services support adult mental health, older people and adults, and children, young people and families. Its biggest bases are the Cavell Centre in Peterborough and Fulbourn Hospital, Cambridge, but its 4,000 staff are based in more than 50 locations, supporting a population of nearly one million people.

Company size

4,000+

Industry

Healthcare

Products used

Challenge

With new Patient-Level Information and Costings Systems (PLICS) regulations in force for Mental Health, CPFT needed to update its systems to comply. The Trust was in the process of implementing a new e-patient record system, so requested a PLICS deadline extension, which was granted.

Michelle Barnes, CPFT’s Assistant Director of Finance, explains: “We knew that the regulation would soon be extended to its community operations, so we decided to deploy a PLICS solution for both Mental Health and Community. We particularly wanted to find a system that felt intuitive to our team, so we could get the most value and efficiency from it.”

CPFT decided to replace its existing software outright, rather than upgrading it. The team selected CACI to integrate and implement our Synergy 4 patient level costing solution in a competitive process delivered through the NHS procurement framework.

System update in order to stay compliant

Intuitive system to achieve value and efficiency

Replacement of old system

Solution

Michelle Barnes says, “We had demonstrations of four different systems. We particularly liked the logic of Synergy 4 — it matched how we approach things in our day-to-day work. For example, it uses familiar language and terms in allocations and apportionments. Other systems that we reviewed seemed either too basic or too convoluted.”

Finance Assistant Michelle Clarke adds, “We had been using Excel for a lot of our costings, which had its limitations. Some of the solutions we evaluated were still spreadsheet-based — we wanted to move away from this to a specialist system. We liked the way the outputs were presented and being able to customise the dashboards, so we could choose what we wanted to see.”

Once CPFT had selected the CACI solution, CACI’s trainers booked in working sessions to upload data and support the CPFT team to embed their financial model. CACI delivered training on the features and functions of the system, in context of CPFT’s particular approach, and provided a high-level reference guide.

Michelle Barnes says, “CACI made us feel confident that they were on our wavelength whenever we asked questions about the system.”

Michelle Clarke agrees: “We worked with two different trainers, who were both really knowledgeable. They always understood what we needed – we felt the system was in our control from day one.”

Results

Synergy 4 provides granular, detailed and accurate information that CPFT can use in an intuitive and collaborative way across the Trust. Michelle Clarke affirms: “Synergy 4 gives us a lot more flexibility with the dashboards – we can share the information with clinical managers and show them the fluctuations, in more detail. You can customise it for wards, teams and communities. Before we only had average contact and bed days – now we can have much more detail when we talk about what services cost.

“Before, we basically divided total costs by the number of patients to calculate patient-level costings. Now, we have so much more scope to be detailed and to layer financial information with demographics and population data. For example, we can apply postcodes and look at metrics like staff downtime and travel time for patients.”

Michelle Barnes adds, “When we move into Critical Care boards, we’ll have to split our contract into two, for north and south. The extra information we can extract from PLICS at GP practice level will really help us see how to split that contract.”

Testimonial

It’s a strong relationship – we’ve had great support and interaction with everyone from the account manager to the trainers and helpdesk. We had a few IT issues, related to our firewall and making connections through it. CACI’s consultants were really responsive and came back to us very quickly to get this sorted. They were always progressing what they needed to and checking that things were satisfactorily resolved. The Synergy User Group is great – it helps us continue to explore and make the most of the solution, to deliver more decision insight and value for our Trust.

Michelle Barnes

Assistant Director of Finance, CPFT

Solutions

Healthcare data analytics

Understand health data at a granular level for smart decisions

NHS teams face pressure to deliver better patient outcomes while meeting demanding targets and future needs.

The introduction of integrated care systems (ICSs) emphasises the need for effective data sharing across NHS organisations and partners. By consolidating and managing data more efficiently, NHS teams can improve services, optimise resources and enhance patient care – driving both operational and cost improvements.

Healthcare data analytics - Young female nurses walk down a hospital hallway while a doctor pushes a hospital bed and another nurse assists an old women in a wheelchair.

Struggling to meet stakeholder data needs?

Providing a unified, coherent analytics solution can be challenging when different teams require insights at different times.

Need to empower your organisation with data-driven decisions?

Self-serve analytics enable wider access to critical insights, driving faster, informed decision-making.

Overwhelmed by large volumes of complex data?

Handling vast, intricate datasets requires a solution that simplifies presentation, keeping clarity for all users.

Did you know?

1.7%

increase in outpatient appointments from 2023 to 2024.

Source: NHS England Digital

Smart decision-making

Healthcare data analytics that power up health services

Real-time insights for safer care

Give clinicians the data they need at the point of care to make faster, more confident decisions.

Smarter performance decisions

Use analytics to spot opportunities, remove bottlenecks and guide strategic action.

Insights for every stakeholder

Deliver tailored, visual analytics that empower leaders and frontline teams alike.

Stronger outcomes, every day

Optimise theatres, rostering, waiting lists and capacity to improve care delivery.

Stay ahead of demand

Forecast and manage demand to keep services efficient and responsive.

Budgets that deliver more

Link spending to measurable outcomes and get maximum value from every investment.

Time for a demo?

Testimonial

“The team help us to continue to explore and make the most of the solution, to deliver more decision, insight, and value for our Trust.”

Michelle Barnes

Assistant Director of Finance, CPFT

We give health services control over costs

Leading Trusts choose our healthcare data analytics for a reason

Secure data insights for all stakeholders

Ensure data is delivered securely to meet the needs of every stakeholder.

Patient care analytics

Use data-driven insights to improve the understanding of patient care quality.

Flexible and scalable

Deploy scalable analytics that are simple to implement and support decision-making at the point of need.

Here’s the proof

Migrating North Bristol Trust (NBT) from their existing reporting tool to Power BI

Uncover the implementation process CACI undertook with North Bristol Trust (NBT) to successfully migrate the Trust from their original reporting tool to Power BI, from business case creation to sign-off.

View case study

Power BI migration & implementation process & outcomes – pt1

Awards & accreditations

There’s more where that came from

Related services

Patient level costing system

Synergy combats challenges with granular, patient-level cost data. Helping better decision-making, improving patient outcomes and building efficient resource management.

InView

InView gives you actionable insights from all care data sources, empowering effective decision-making and ICS collaboration. For better patient outcomes and streamlined operations that drive improvements every day.

Synergy

NHS trusts face increasing pressure to identify inefficiencies and optimise costs. Synergy empowers teams – from costing specialists to clinicians – with intuitive, patient-level costing data.

FAQs

Answers to common questions about healthcare data analytics.

Ask a question

What are the benefits of using analytics in healthcare?

Using healthcare data analytics offers several benefits, including improved decision-making, enhanced resource management, and better patient outcomes. It provides real-time insights to clinicians, supports strategic decisions with performance analytics, and offers tailored analytics tools for diverse stakeholders. Additionally, healthcare data analytics helps organisations understand demand, optimize budgets, and connect investments with tangible outcomes, ensuring efficient and effective healthcare delivery.

Can healthcare data analytics help improve patient outcomes?

Yes, healthcare data analytics can significantly improve patient outcomes by providing real-time data that informs clinical decisions. By leveraging data insights, healthcare providers can streamline theatre utilization, optimize staff rostering, reduce waiting lists, and enhance capacity planning. These improvements lead to better patient care, increased efficiency, and overall improved outcomes.

How can healthcare data analytics enhance operational efficiency?

Healthcare data analytics enhances operational efficiency by providing insights into resource utilisation, workflow optimisation, and process improvements. By analysing data on staff rostering, theatre utilisation, and patient flow, healthcare providers can identify bottlenecks and implement strategies to streamline operations, reduce wait times, and improve overall efficiency.

Solutions

Patient level costing system

Take control of your patient level data and cost modelling

Health services can struggle to accurately track and manage patient care costs – leading to inefficiencies and wasted resources.

Our patient level costing system, Synergy, combats these challenges with granular, patient-level cost data. Helping better decision-making, improving patient outcomes and building efficient resource management.

Source: NHS England Digital

Struggling to pinpoint the true cost of patient care?

Tracking costs across multiple services without clear, patient-level data can feel overwhelming.

Facing inefficiencies in resource allocation?

Without detailed insight into patient-specific costs, optimising care delivery is a challenge.

Lost in outdated costing methods?

Traditional cost allocation leaves gaps in understanding the real financial impact of patient care.

Did you know?

70%

of elective care incurred costs that were more than 10% different than the tariff, driven by factors including diagnosis complexity and resource use.

Source: Nuffield Trust

£60B

The total cost for acute patient-level activities in the NHS can amount to over £60 billion per year.

From complex to simple

A patient level costing system that is designed to be efficient

Gain a clear view of patient costs

Provide managers and clinicians with detailed cost data, enabling confident assessment of cost legitimacy across all patients.

Identify cost discrepancies

Highlight variations in costs across teams and departments to pinpoint inefficiencies and guide targeted improvements.

Streamline National Cost Collection submissions

Leverage built-in tools and expert support to ensure NCC and PLICS submissions are completed accurately and on time.

Improve budget accuracy

Enhance the precision of budget projections and make informed adjustments for patient groups, supporting smarter financial planning.

Make better decisions

Apply cost and demographic insights to refine strategies, improve care quality, and allocate resources where they’re needed most.

Simplify with single-model reporting

Generate both patient-level costs and statutory submissions from one comprehensive model, reducing complexity and saving time.

Time for a demo?

Testimonial

“We had been using Excel for a lot of our costings, which had its limitations. Some of the solutions we evaluated were still spreadsheet-based – we wanted to move away from this to a specialist system. We liked the way the outputs were presented and being able to customise the dashboards, so we could choose what we wanted to see.”

Michelle Clarke

Finance Assistant, Cambridge and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust

We give health services control over costs

Leading NHS organisations choose our patient level costing system us for a reason

Better patient outcomes

Activity-based costing provides a complete view, enabling informed decisions that directly enhance patient care.

Optimise service delivery

Gain clarity on patient demographics and treatment pathways to deliver services more efficiently and effectively.

Cost-effective, results-driven

Designed with health services in mind; reduces overheads, streamlines operations and delivers measurable value.

Awards & accreditations

There’s more where that came from

Related services

Healthcare data analytics

By consolidating and managing data more efficiently, NHS teams can improve services, optimise resources and enhance patient care – driving both operational and cost improvements.

InView

Synergy

NHS trusts face increasing pressure to identify inefficiencies and optimise costs. Synergy empowers teams – from costing specialists to clinicians – with intuitive, patient-level costing data.

FAQs

Answers to common questions about patient level costing systems.

Ask a question

How does a patient level costing system benefit healthcare providers?

A patient level costing system benefits healthcare providers by offering a clear view of patient costs, empowering managers and clinicians to assess cost legitimacy across all patients confidently. It helps identify cost discrepancies across teams and departments, pinpointing inefficiencies and enabling targeted action for improvement. Additionally, PLCS simplifies National Cost Collection submissions, improves budget accuracy, and supports better decision-making by providing cost and demographic insights.

Can a patient level costing system help with regulatory compliance?

Yes, a patient level costing System can help with regulatory compliance by simplifying the process of National Cost Collection (NCC) submissions. With built-in tools and expert support, PLCS ensures that healthcare providers can confidently meet NCC and patient level information and costing systems (PLICS) submission requirements on time. This reduces the complexity of compliance and helps maintain adherence to regulatory standards.

What makes CACI’s Synergy system unique?

CACI’s Synergy system is unique because it offers a comprehensive view of patient-level costs and supports both patient-level and statutory submissions using a single model. This simplifies workflows and reduces complexity for healthcare providers.

Additionally, Synergy empowers managers and clinicians with detailed cost data, enabling them to make informed decisions that improve patient care and optimize resource use. The system’s built-in tools and expert support also ensure effortless compliance with National Cost Collection requirements.

Solutions

Healthcare insights

Doing amazing things with data to improve efficiency and patient outcomes across the NHS

Data insight is crucial in helping NHS organisations plan, operate and continually optimise resources, services and staffing. Effectively linking and understanding all data across the NHS will improve patient outcomes and experiences whilst driving cost savings. From better theatre utilisation and staff rostering to waiting list reduction, capacity planning and operational management, CACI shares your commitment to providing the best healthcare experiences to meet ever changing patient needs.

Health insights - Alt text: Doctor in white coat typing on a laptop with a stethoscope and clipboard on the desk.

Cost insights

Using data-driven insights to enhance patient care and financial efficiency, Patient Level Costing (PLICS) enables healthcare providers to accurately assess costs at the patient, pathway and levels. Our solutions are interoperable with other solutions used across the NHS.

This helps healthcare providers gain insights into of care pathways, resource allocation and operational performance, enhancing forecasting and driving efficiencies.

Patient insights

CACI supports healthcare providers in gaining a deeper understanding of the patients using their services and the surrounding population. Understanding patients and potential patients is vital in population health planning, service planning and preventative interventions.

We can help you bring this crucial information to life in targeted, visual data maps.

Data insights

CACI’s secure cloud data platform creates tangible knowledge from NHS data, breaking down the organisational boundaries in the world of value-based healthcare. With ever increasing demand for insights across NHS services and patients, we support you in embracing cloud technology to meet the needs of diverse stakeholders, complement the federated data platform (FDP) and reduce the total cost of ownership.

Our hybrid and open approach enables NHS organisations to adopt FDP products as part of a cohesive data strategy.

Supporting the NHS 10 Year Plan

Data use and sharing are fundamental to the future roadmap of the NHS. It is essential to link patient, hospital and system level data to achieve a complete picture. This will transform efficiencies, support better patient outcomes, reduce duplication and create cost efficiencies.

Hospital to community

Our products and services are designed to deliver tangible insights across NHS Trusts and services. With our technology suite, you can better understand patient needs and geographies, delivering the right support, at the right time, in the right location.

Analogue to digital

Our products are digital by design, removing paperwork and enhancing patient convenience and experience. Furthermore, our products are interoperable, cloud first and underpinned by rigorous safety standards.

Sickness to prevention

We can support you in understanding the population around you, identifying at risk communities and individuals and helping you to reach them before they reach you. With hyperlocal insights, you can target, plan and communicate with cohorts or individuals, making your communications more effective and more efficient.

Why CACI?

At CACI, we’ve been supporting the UK’s public services, including the NHS, since the 1980s. Our philosophy of continuous improvement has facilitated this longevity, and it’s something that we proudly apply to this day.

By embracing teamwork with our clients and partners, we are in a position to deliver products and services that deliver tangible benefits and enhanced outcomes. By learning from every client and every project, we can continue to implement continuous improvement to our products, services and delivery.

With a range of products and services, we can find the right outcomes for you