South West London NHS
Preparing for the National Programme for IT
South West London and St George's NHS Mental Health Care Trust serves a local population of about one million people across five south London boroughs, caring for over 15,000 patients. With 780 beds and 30 Community Mental Health Teams, the Trust is responsible for all community and hospital psychiatric services across Wandsworth, Merton, Sutton, Richmond and Kingston.
Spread across multiple sites, the Trust has in the past struggled to deliver a high quality of service and support. Now they needed to prepare for the National Programme for IT by adopting ITIL processes to ultimately transform the service culture.
Using Plan-Net's quick and selective methodology, the Trust has achieved a rapid ITIL implementation at the service desk. Adoption of Best Practice also helped the Trust introduce new Service Level Agreements.
South West London and St George's NHS Mental Health Care Trust is gearing up for the delivery of a number of new national IT systems over the next few years as part of the government's planned technology led transformation of the NHS. Central to the success of these new systems will be a significant improvement in IT service delivery. Without it, the potential benefits to both clinicians and patients might not be achieved.
The Trust has been working with Plan-Net to successfully adopt ITIL processes. This adoption of Best Practice is helping the Trust to introduce new Service Level Agreements. It is also supporting the Trust's role as a pilot site for new NPfIT deployments.
The existing service desk was reliant upon an Access database to log user calls. As a result, the Trust had no figures on number of calls, their location, or time to resolution. There was no opportunity to track trends or identify areas that needed technical or training input.
Furthermore, poor communication between users and IT technical teams led to confusion over system changes. This in turn led to unacceptable unplanned downtime. The adoption of the ITIL processes for service desk, change management, release management and incident management would create the right environment for the deployment of Connecting for Health applications. It would also enable the creation of targeted Service Level Agreements across the Trust.
With no internal ITIL experience, the Trust turned to a third party for support and guidance. Having assessed a number of ITIL consultancy services, the Trust opted for Plan-Net, an organisation that in recent years has attained significant experience in implementing ITIL across the NHS.
Fazila Suleman, Project Manager at South West London and St George's NHS Mental Health Care Trust says: "Plan-Net is a very professional organisation. The consultants know exactly what they are doing and demonstrated an excellent understanding of both ITIL and the requirements of an NHS Trust".
The Trust was also impressed with the consultancy's methodology for ITIL adoption. "Plan-Net has created a number of generic ITIL processes which were rapidly tailored to meet the needs of the Trust," Fazila continues. "This meant a fast, lower cost ITIL adoption whilst still attaining all the benefits of improved service delivery."
As the first point of contact between users and the IT department, the Trust opted to prioritise the overhaul of the service desk. With one desk staffed by three full time employees supporting every application across the Trust, there was a real need to improve both the quality of service and information captured to drive ongoing improvements.
One of Plan-Net's primary roles was to overcome the barrier between the IT department and the users - a barrier caused primarily by poor communication between the two. The consultants worked closely with the service delivery staff to improve understanding and communication
Plan-Net also worked closely with the Trust as it began to implement a new service management system - Magic from BMC Software. "The adoption of Magic has not been without difficulties," says Fazila. "Plan-Net's consultants have helped the Trust to set expectations and define requirements, particularly in areas such as information gathering and reporting."
To support the ITIL adoption programme, Plan-Net provided ITIL Foundation training for fourteen of the Trust's IT service delivery staff. This helped the team understand the goals and objectives of the Trust and gave them a common language across all service and support functions. Using a workshop approach, changes were explained to the service delivery team, and the new ITIL processes embedded.
The new service desk process is beginning to change user perception. Simple process changes, such as automatically producing an email with reference number whenever a call is logged, are increasing the users' confidence that their problems are being handled straightaway.
New services, such as making the Service Catalogue available on the Intranet, are increasing the visibility of the service desk and making the IT service delivery process far more proactive. As Fazila explains, "The Trust is in the process of defining Service Level Agreements between IT and user departments. With improved understanding of what can be delivered and accurate metrics about what is already being delivered, we can have the frank discussions required to define ongoing service requirements."
She continues, "This level of communication will become increasingly important across the NHS as more components of the National Programme are delivered. The Trust faces a challenging time ahead with significant changes to the IT infrastructure. Defining and meeting relevant Service Level Agreements will go a long way towards easing the transformation process." The Trust has also reduced problems associated with poor change and release management processes.
Fazila concludes, "The feedback the Trust has attained to date from external organisations involved with the National Programme is that we are significantly ahead in the adoption of ITIL, especially at the service desk. The combination of Plan-Net's speedy implementation methodology and the consultants' ability to explain the need for Best Practice to staff has given the Trust a head start in transforming IT service delivery".
