NHS England
Working with TallyPro
NHS England (Midlands & Lancashire Commissioning Support Unit)
MLCSU is responsible for delivering transformational commissioning functions in the NHS such as service re-design, market management, healthcare procurement, contract negotiation, information analysis and risk stratification.
NHS England
What they needed
The majority of NHS England contracts (they are engaged on) are negotiated on a time spent basis. MLCSU approached TallyPro because they needed a robust, flexible time tracking software to capture time spent by its staff in order to understand the cost of delivering its contracts.
The CSU required some 2,000 staff to complete weekly time sheets against over 700 projects/services. Staff are based at several main sites across the CSU but many are mobile, meaning they could be operating anywhere within the region.
The high number of mobile users and the requirement for a quick, easy, robust time capture solution meant that over 97% of users were going to use the TallyPro App either on their smart phones or via a standard web browser on a PC or a Mac.
How TallyPro helped
Within a month, TallyPro’s team of experts customised the App, using the security functions within TallyPro to feed users with only the projects/services relevant to their department, as well as providing instant hints on each project/service to help staff ensure they were posting time to the correct projects.
We also created a special ‘apportionment’ function. This allows staff to make one time sheet entry which is then split or apportioned across several clients based on a pre-determined ratio. This was essential for speeding up time entry where a single contract was established covering multiple clients.
Much of the system terminology was changed to reflect language used across the NHS to make the system intuitive for users to navigate.
A number of different user roles were set up ranging from basic users, reporting/admin users, and top level super users.
We ran several on-line training sessions for all staff and a number of detailed “super user” training sessions.
Results
After over a year of intensive use by MLCSU, NHS England now has a huge databank of time and staff metrics which is proving essential for reporting on contract performance, staff optimisation, workforce planning, contract re-negotiation and developing pricing for new tenders.