Project Management in Healthcare
Project Management Efficiency and Change in Healthcare and NHS
About Derbyshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust
“ProjectVision is an excellent tool to help us deliver our Change Programme”
Ifti Majid
Executive Director of Operation, Performance and IM&T
Derbyshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust
The Trust was formed in 2002 following a merger to become a new Derbyshire-wide specialist Mental Health Trust. It was awarded the status of Foundation Trust with effect from February 2011. It now no longer provides just mental health but also delivers a specialist children’s service as well.
The Trust is simultaneously running multiple projects, across Transactional and Transformation Change Programmes, aimed at delivering efficiencies and quality improvements. These projects and programmes are required to be tracked and monitored closely to ensure cost control, benefits realisation and quality monitoring within an assurance framework.
The Challenge
Derbyshire Healthcare NHS FT were managing their Transactional and Transformation change programmes and monitoring across the domains of quality, time an benefit using an in-house developed bespoke Micros9ft Excel application.
Whilst this system worked very well for them functionally, the limitations that Excel provided in terms of difficulty sharing information, inability for multiple users to view and update information at the same time and difficulty of accessing remotely meant they required a different solution.
Ifti Majid, Executive Director of Operations, Performance and IM&T, required a solution that:
- Mapped to their successful and existing comprehensive processes
- Provides user specific dashboard views of all aspects of project, programmes and performance management
- Manages project and programme risks and issues
- Provides Benefit Realisation Management
- Tracks and reports on qualitative and quantitative key performance indicators
- Allows linking of projects and programs to corporate strategic objectives
- Provides Quality Assurance
- Is easy to learn, adopt and use
- Is entirely web based allowing multi user and remote access
Our Solution
Derbyshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust chose to implement ProjectVision, the entirely web based Project, Programme and Performance solution from Cora Systems.
Cora Systems worked in partnership with Derbyshire Healthcare NHS FT to implement ProjectVision. The first task was to set up ProjectVision to reflect the Trust’s terminology, program assurance and project methodology. This was quickly and easily achieved providing a familiar interface for the Trust’s users with no loss of fidelity to their model of working.
Existing projects and programs were set up, assigning tasks, planned benefits, budgets, costs, risk, issues and project owners. These projects were then mapped to the Trust’s corporate strategic objectives, immediately giving the Trust’s management visibility of what work is being undertaken to deliver on these objectives. In addition pipeline projects were added to allow for prioritisation of future work and initiatives.
The Trust’s Key Performance Indicators, both qualitative and quantitative were created in ProjectVision and the appropriate targets set. These KPI’s were then linked to the projects allowing complete visibility of how Strategy, corporate objectives, programs, projects and performance are linked within the Trust.
The user dashboards and reports were configured for each role meaning that each user has instant visibility of the information that is critical to their role. For example, Ifti’s dashboard shows him the RAG status of key projects, an overview of the quality impact of key performance indicators and the key risks and issues concerning his priority projects.
Cora Systems are providing a fully hosted solution for the Trust. This meant that the solution was up and running extremely quickly and Cora Systems take care of all maintenance, security and backups, allowing the Trust to concentrate on their key activity of ensuring consistently high levels of patient care.
Benefits to the Health Service Executive
Discussing the benefits of ProjectVision to the Trust, Nick Hudson, Head of Service Improvement and Programme Assurance, said “ProjectVision’s reporting capability will fully integrate with our existing performance framework and provide us with even greater assurance through connecting directly to our HR, Finance and Activity systems”.
Strategy – Performance – Programmes of Work
Nick continued to say, “Delivering our 5 year Integrated Business Plan through aligning strategy with our overall program of Transactional and Transformational projects assures our continuous improvements in service quality, productivity and efficiency.”
“ProjectVision has given us greater visibility and control of our projects and enhanced our assurance that we are providing consistently high quality care”
Nick Hodson
Head of Service, Improvement & Programme Assurance
Derbyshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust
The Trust has derived a number of benefits through using ProjectVision. These include:
- Visibility of how well the Trust is doing in providing consistently high levels of patient care
- Control and visibility of the progress and statuses of the Transactional and Transformation Change Programmes
- Easily identifying change projects that require attention
- An ability to monitor the impact of a change project on service quality
- Clear presentation of critical decision making and exception information through user role specific dashboards and reports
- The reinforcing of a consistent project methodology already being used throughout the organisation
- Simple, easy to use system with clear navigation
- Automatic alerts and emails ensuring on-schedule delivery
- Extensive reporting for various types of stakeholders (managers, clinicians, project team, etc.)
- Significant saving of time in management and reporting
- Complimented the Trust’s strong program assurance process
To download a PDF of this Case Study, Please Click Here - Derbyshire NHS Foundation Trust- Case Study
