Northern Care Alliance Board Highlights Digital Progress
The Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust’s recent board meetings in January and March provided insight into ongoing digital transformation projects, priorities, innovations, and challenges.
The approval of NCA’s EPR business readiness and business plan forms part of the trust’s yearly objectives, aligned with the principal goal of preparing infrastructure, systems, and processes to improve population health and tackle health inequalities in collaboration with partners.
Within the board assurance framework, the trust outlined existing controls like an infrastructure remediation and an EPR transformation programme.
Control Gaps Identified to Mitigate Digital Risks
It also identified control gaps requiring attention to mitigate risks related to digital systems sustainability, emphasizing the necessity of a “multi-year investment plan aligned to infrastructure and application roadmap.” The current risk score remains “high” at 20, with a target score of 9.
Andrew Stallard, senior responsible owner for the EPR programme, provided an update noting delays “primarily due to extended timelines for obtaining outline business case approval from NHS England” and the potential financial and resource pressures these delays could exacerbate.
Risks include ensuring readiness for “a complex digital transformation” and the limited capacity within the digital team.
Current efforts focus on readiness activities such as mapping applications and aligning projects like the electronic document management system. Future plans involve refining governance and ensuring “the readiness of key systems.”
Digital Infrastructure Highlights Seven ‘well-progressing’ Projects
An update on NCA’s digital infrastructure remediation highlighted that seven projects are “progressing well.” These include collaborating with suppliers to complete phases ahead of implementation.
Wifi optimization is reportedly “well underway,” with hardware delivered to relevant sites for deployment. The business case for a strategic Windows 11 upgrade has been approved and moved into the delivery phase.
A new on-premises and cloud backup and recovery platform project has entered the closure phase, and platform re-engineering remediation work has advanced to delivery.
During the January meeting, the research and innovation committee raised concerns about challenges in recruiting and retaining clinical coders, attributing difficulties to “digital limitations and reliance on paper systems,” which necessitate coders being on-site.
Referred to as “a developing problem,” the report acknowledged that while agency staff could provide interim support, trusts modernizing their electronic patient records were increasingly hiring coders.
Lorna Allan, NCA’s CDIO, highlighted a challenge tied to the population health agenda: the need for “a patient record on an effective digital footprint.” While discussions were ongoing around developing a suitable data strategy and leveraging artificial intelligence, Lorna underscored the substantial effort required to advance this agenda, suggesting a reevaluation of realistic goals concerning population health.
