Meridian’s client is one of the leading NHS Foundation Trusts in West Yorkshire. Working in three localities, it provides mental health, community mental health and learning disabilities services.
Following a successful piece of work on the Adult Acute Inpatient Wards (no Out of Area patients since March 2015) and Community Mental Health Teams, Meridian have been invited to carry out a second analysis, this time focusing on the Corporate Services to ensure that the corporate processes were supporting front-line clinical staff as effectively as possible.
During a two week’s analysis phase, Meridian were able to identify improvement opportunities within the Corporate Services. These were mainly focused around processes and actions that are not adding any value or are not worth the effort, yet have been perpetuated habitually and impact on the capacity of different Corporate Directorates. An additional finding was that the Business Intelligence Team were producing multiple reports just for the local CCGs, without these reports being ever used by the internal managers.
Following the findings of the study, Meridian embarked upon a high-level, 10-weeks’ project with the Trust with the goal of improving the processes within the Corporate Services and free up capacity that can then be used to provide a refocused approach built around the needs of the front-line staff and managers.
The approach taken by Meridian was straightforward and engaging. Phase 1 involved looking critically at the current processes used by the Finance, HR and Commercial (IT) Directorates and deciding which of them were not efficient or not adding value and could therefore be stopped in order to increase the teams’ capacity. The goal of Phase 2 was to check the consequences of stopping of the previously agreed processes. Phase 3 focused on installing new processes to ensure the services provided by the corporate teams were of a consistently high quality. Phase 4 was again concentrated on the consequences of the implementation of new ways of working.
In addition to this, Phases 2 and 4 included external stakeholders, especially the CCGs. Meridian have met with the representatives of the Commissioners to bring across the approach of ensuring that there is only one reporting work stream instead of two, which had been placing a significant workload on the Business Intelligence Team. The approach can be colloquially summarised as “why would the CCGs need to know more than the Trust’s internal managers?” (apart from certain exceptions).
The project was not easily quantifiable, as it mostly dealt with perceptions and processes and was not aimed at gaining any financial savings. It made the Trust challenge the status quo, question current practice and ensure that the new processes are as effective as possible and supportive of the front-line clinicians and managers. Meridian remained in a coordinating role, following up on the implementation of agreements and driving the process with the Directorates, who positively retained ownership of the changes. The results of the project include:
- 50% reduction in the number of reminders sent to managers regarding mandatory training by eliminating duplication of work within HR
- 83% reduction of active policies
- New communication processes between Finance and HR to ensure effective and accurate reconciliation of information between Directorates