Countess of Chester NHS Trust – 

Data Quality Optimisation Project ~100 Audit Reports        

OVERVIEW

Several months after going live with the Oracle Cerner Electronic Patient Record, the Countess of Chester NHS Trust found themselves facing multiple data quality issues. They wanted a solution to identify, prioritise and resolve these issues, as well as incorporating new system enhancements as part of their EPR optimisation project.

CHALLENGE

While they were aware that the data issues arising from the go-live were significant, the trust did not have an overview of the scale of the problem. The e-Health team were tasked with providing a range of reports, covering all main data quality scenarios with a limited background of trust operational and data quality processes.

“2000 NON-CASHED APPOINTMENTS” RESOLVED

“15000 DUPLICATE WAITLIST ENTRIES” RESOLVED

PROBLEM IDENTITY

In addition to using the e-Health reports catalogue, we also worked closely with key trust stakeholders to understand, define and analyse potential reports gaps. Once the report outputs were achieved, we carried out an extensive data analysis, prioritised the tasks ahead and assessed their impact.

These reports were categorised into the following areas along with a defined scoring:

– Clinical
– Operational
– Financial
– Elective Care
Countess of Chester Hospital
BENEFITS & OUTCOME
Sample reports outputs identified and resolved,
  • 15,000 duplicate requests
  • 2,000 historic un-cashed-up appointments
  • 20,000 unknowns
  • 8,614 pathways and appointments
  • Slot utilisation reports for capacity management
  • 83 long-stayers admissions reports
  • Overseas patients
  • 70 patient encounters with incorrect specialities associated
  • 765 patient encounters with waitlist issues
  • 307 ERS Build audit issues identified
  • 300 retired consultants to be removed
  • 7 corrupt (unusable) future appointments
  • 4,437 corrupt outpatient GP referrals

SOLUTION

The e-Health IT team worked closely with all trust stakeholders to identify, develop, prioritise and impact-assess all data quality reports. We produced a detailed analysis of the report output data and recommended corrective action.

Our fully structured change control process meant that the trust had a complete, transparent overview of all planned changes to the live system, along with defined back-out procedures.

We supplied the trust with an experienced data quality team to perform corrections in the live system. To ensure completeness, reports were then re-run before trust sign-off. 

Our dedicated project manager worked with the trust to coordinate all aspects of the change and provide quality assurance on each deliverable. Weekly highlight reports were distributed to the trust leadership team, outlining RAG status, key project milestones, risks & issues, and planned achievements for the next period. 

We collaborated closely with the trust’s data quality, CCIO and back-office teams to understand and document root cause analysis. We also defined a new process to mitigate some recurring issues after the fixes were applied.

The trust selected a subset of DQ reports to be implemented into EPR, allowing trust staff to execute reports and monitor data as needed. This left them with full control and oversight of an effective, streamlined EPR system.