Tools & Techniques

Free your data and kill the spreadsheets

Written by:
Matthew Tod

Liberating data from PAS & PTL spreadsheets creates a myriad of performance enhancing opportunities

High quality data is like electricity, it flows through an organisation powering all the exciting new innovations; innovations that would not function without it!

The waiting list challenge that faces the NHS requires fresh thinking and new approaches to reduce the anxiety and suffering of patients. This fresh thinking needs to involve the use of data to enable teams to work smarter, not just harder. This is the major focus of the team at Logan Tod & Co as well as our partner organisations.

One area where this is true is the operational management of elective care where for too long poor information and weak spreadsheet-based tools have been used to control the most important administrative task in the hospital – managing patient journeys from referral to discharge. 

There are many tools that can help accelerate and automate patient flow through one or more care providers.  However, all these intelligent tools require high quality data, the preparation of which is a thankless but critical task.  

With new tools, such as PP+, that has been developed by our partner Insource, care providers will have the ability to quickly improve data quality using intelligent algorithms as well as easy to use interfaces to collaborate effectively across multiple care providers.

PP+ can extract data from legacy PAS and PTL systems and improve both the quality and the accessibility of the data.  Better data is validated and accessible which means it is:

  • Correctly coded
  • Error free
  • Available to the right people
  • Updated at least daily
  • Easily understood

Solutions like PP+ enables a range of different applications that give back time to analysts, create fresh insight and improve management. The areas of innovation and business benefit delivered include:

Deeper insight & planning to facilitate change

  • Predictive Analytics
  • Demand & Capacity Planning
  • Patient Flow Acceleration
  • Patient Journey Visualisation

New tools that apply intelligence to manage and automate complex tasks

  • Command Centre
  • Pathway management & scheduling
  • Service Planning

Reduced time and effort doing basic reporting tasks

  • Automated National RTT Reporting
  • Automated Local Reporting

It is for this reason we have sought out and partnered with the team at Insource. They provide the electricity we need to develop and deploy the best solutions to reduce the length of time patients are anxious, uncertain, distressed or in pain.