Prosum is a powerful quality and benefits tracking and monitoring tool that helps NHS organisations record and report on the results of their healthcare transformation programmes and determine the best return on investment from their service redesign programmes.

Prosum provides a central repository of information with tools that accurately align benefits and service-quality to targets and efficiently produce reports that meet NHS and government requirements.

Instead of dealing with disparate (often paper-based) information from multiple sources relating to numerous mandates, Prosum allows users to easily define the outcomes and benefits they are interested in, capture data about them and measure them in a meaningful manner.

Implications for the NHS

There is an increasing emphasis on the need for all NHS organisations to adopt a robust approach to the identification, measurement, tracking, reporting and realisation of quality and benefits. In order to do this effectively, quality and benefits need to be managed at all levels:

• individual project level
• programme level
• Trust level (PCT/Acute/Foundation/Mental Health /Ambulance)
• LHC
• SHA

Individual projects need a robust process to manage the quality and benefits achieved from projects but there needs to be a mechanism to enable these to be aggregated and viewed at programme-level and across a PCT/LHC. For IT-enabled programmes, SHAs are required to performance-manage LHCs against their IM&T plans and, in turn, will be performance-managed against their contributions to the Annual Benefits Statement for the DH.

 

The Prosum system

All organisations evolve over time. Objectives change, technology emerges, thinking develops.

To keep up, organisations are put under continuous pressure to improve and, more importantly, be seen to improve.

All too often, projects are implemented because we know they should be. But what benefit do they provide? How can we measure benefits across projects and programmes alike? Are we getting value for money? Are they actually aligned to help us meet our objectives?

At the heart of the Prosum system is a knowledge database which can import and utilise existing national benefits registers or can allow organisations to define and use their own benefits data. Benefits can be created or imported and can then be ‘tagged’ to one or more strategic targets to which they contribute. Prosum also allows an organisation to set its own targets and align them to their LHC or SHA. Targets and benefits can be viewed in a hierarchy.

On implementing a project, an organisation records it in Prosum and identifies which benefits it intends to capture and over what period of time. Enforced searching of existing registers avoids the duplication of benefit measurement across projects. Prosum then automatically generates a schedule of metric capture milestones and assigns actions to nominated individuals. Over time, Prosum prompts these individuals to enter metrics automatically by email and allows administrators to report on the progress against plan.

This consistent capture mechanism then allows effective reporting at all levels, including aggregation of benefits capture across multiple projects and organisations. This facility enables a consolidated view of the benefits realisation programme across a whole Strategic Health Authority with a supporting reporting function.

 

Prosum features

Prosum has many powerful features which allow you to centrally plan track and monitor the impact and benefits being achieved across multiple projects and Programmes across your organisations.

In addition to tracking and monitoring progress of existing projects, Prosum helps you to think ahead. Intelligent searching and analysis tools allow you to plan the most cost-effective way to meet your objectives.

Key features of Prosum

• One single repository of information with no duplication of effort or double counting of benefits
• Ability to set targets and track benefits against them
• Ability to identify projects that will deliver key benefits
• Automated schedule creation for the capture of metrics
• Automated email reminders directly to key individuals for metrics capture; Ability to see the cumulative effect of benefits across multiple projects and programmes against individual targets
• Automated output of statutory reports
• User customised reports
• Comparison of performance and benchmarking within and across organisations.

 Prosum allows organisations to:

• Instantly see where projects are adding value and how their impact is affecting the achievement of your strategic objectives
• Identify where disparate projects could work together more effectively towards a common goal
• Minimise effort in tracking and monitoring of your benefits realisation programme
• Maximise the benefits of your work by setting targets and monitoring progress against them
• Compare performance against benchmarks and other similar projects in your organisation quickly and easily.

Deploying across multiple organisations

Prosum delivers additional advantages if deployed across multiple sites or organisations:

• Ability to take a wider view of benefits across a Programme, Primary Care Trust (PCT), Local Health Community (LHC) and Strategic Health Authority (SHA) level
• Consistency of approach across organisations
• Ability to compare and contrast across PCTs/LHCs
• Aggregation of results from PCT to SHA reports from a single repository
• Reduction in time and effort required by the SHA to produce an Annual Benefits Statement
• Ability to produce ad-hoc reports where applicable across a number of organisations
• Supports performance management of the LHC Information Management and Technology (IM&T) Plans
• Allows demonstrable evidence of tangible ‘live’ benefits.

 

Why now?

National drivers including World Class Commissioning, the Darzi Next-Stage Review and the National Programme for IT (NPfIT) are all driving organisations to demonstrate that they are delivering value both within their organisations and externally to their stakeholders and customers with regard to:

1. Quality – how do we know when the changes we have made have delivered improvement?
2. How do we demonstrate that we are providing a safe and effective service?
3. How will we evidence that enhanced patient choice has led to benefit for patients?
4. How do we demonstrate that initiatives taken have made an improvement against health outcomes?
5. The contribution of outcomes to the strategic plan
6. Improvement over time
7. Improvement against agreed targets
8. Outcome measures all based on improvement rather than absolute performance.

All of this will requires a robust structure and methodical process to managing benefits which are clearly linked to strategic outcomes and objectives.

Standardised Approach to Benefits

Our belief is that adopting a robust benefits management approach needs to be:

1. Simple to understand
2. An integral part of what we do
3. Emerge from, or complementary to, existing processes
4. Methodical, structured and owned
5. Everybody’s business and embedded within the organisational culture
6. Have meaning to stakeholders
7. Take account of potential dis-benefits
8. Concise. Less is more – quality not quantity of benefits is key.

Our approach includes mapping the identified benefits and associated enablers the relevant beneficiaries and stakeholders and the associated key messages for communication back into the Programme of work.

National Programme for IT Annual Benefits Statements

Among the many drivers behind the creation of the Prosum benefits management system is the need for organisations to support and produce evidence for the National Programme for IT Annual Benefits Statements. During 2007/08, the transfer of resources from central to local ownership of the National Programme for IT (NPfIT) was completed, re-emphasising local accountability for implementation and benefits realisation.

In line with best practice, the NHS is required to systematically measure and report on the benefits realised from the investment in the NPfIT against those identified in national and local business cases. This will enable the Strategic Health Authorities (SHAs) to respond to the requirement for an Annual Benefits Statement set out by the National Audit Office.

SHAs are required to provide the Department of Health (DH) with an evidence-based report showing the benefits realised across its constituent Local Health Communities (LHCs) for inclusion in a national summary report.

This report will evidence the following:

• Collection of metrics to support the realised benefits
• Identification of benefits to be delivered by Information Management and Technology (IM&T) projects and how these support the delivery of service objectives
• Benefits planning and realisation for all deployment activity and how these benefits support service improvement.

Not only does Prosum monitor benefits against individual projects, it provides the tools to take a broader view across a programme, PCT, LHC or SHA.

 

About us

Prosum Alliance is a partnership between business management solution specialist RedBlack Software and healthcare transformation provider CMA Associates.

CMA Associates delivers high-quality support, change management and interim management to the UK's healthcare market. Our consultants have substantial experience working with a wide range of NHS organisations, government bodies and the private sector.

We are experts in all aspects of healthcare transformation management including world-class commissioning, benefits management, organisational development, complex programme management, service redesign, information management and technology-enabled solutions including NHS National Programme for Information Technology (NPfIT) initiatives.

RedBlack Software develops and delivers business management systems to over 100 organisations in the UK. We customise our solutions to our customers' individual needs, providing a secure, easy to use platform for their future plans. RedBlack also offers a full range of support, training and e-business services.