NHS Northamptonshire streamlines commissioning management with Civicas SLAM platform

Trust to automate 1 billion contract management reporting

10th January 2012, London NHS Northamptonshire is implementing Civicas SLAM (Service Level Agreement Manager) software platform to improve how the Primary Care Trust (PCT) plans, monitors and reports the activities it commissions. NHS Northamptonshire commissions approximately 1 billion of healthcare services for 680,000 local residents every year. PCTs commission a huge number of services across multiple providers, such as hospital theatre bookings, community healthcare, bed space and consultants. SLAM ensures PCTs get exactly what they pay for, which has never been more important as they face increasing demands and decreasing budgets, said David Roots, managing director, Civica Health and Social Care. SLAM is the leading integrated commissioning support tool. It improves the visibility of business rules that are applied to data such as Point of Delivery (POD) allocation and local pricing as well as improving the management and control of reference data. The platform will receive files directly from acute providers as well as NHS Connecting for Health (CFH) Secondary Uses Service (SUS data). This ensures that accurate local pricing is automatically applied where contracts between commissioning bodies and local providers require that nationally agreed Payment by Results (PbR) pricing to be superseded. The platforms optimisation of resources towards quality and value for money analysis is critical for NHS Northamptonshire because it is in the process of building businesscritical systems to underpin its role as a future support organisation for PCT clusters and Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs). Paul Birch, Head of Contracting & Business Intelligence, NHS Milton Keynes and Northamptonshire commissioning support hub, said: "GP practices are demanding more accurate pricing information earlier. We have chosen Civica as our new partner based on their ability to bring a combination of technology, people and business processes as well as expertise in local NHS trusts and the market to move forward with improved management and control of commissioning. " David Roots, managing director, Civica Health and Social Care, added: As the NHS migrates to the CCG cluster operating model, trusts need to better analyse growing levels of national and local level commissioning data down to individual patients and GP practices. Automated and more reliable reporting processes built on proven software platforms will optimise finance teams reporting resources and analytical capabilities, helping to drive the 20 billion system efficiencies demanded by the NHS. Ends

About Civica Group Ltd Civica (www.civica.co.uk) is a market leader in specialist systems and business process services that help organisations around the world to transform the way they work. Through experienced people who understand service delivery, the Group applies software, managed services and outsourcing to help customers streamline their activities. Civica supplies more than 2,000 organisations in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Canada and the USA, helping our customers to achieve a successful and more cost-efficient way of working.

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