Experienced health organisations around the world who value IT have recognised that appointing a dedicated clinical practitioner to drive healthcare technology within their organisations can generate greater internal support and end user adoption as well as ensure focus is maintained upon clinical outcomes. This campaign is a step in the right direction for the UK.
Just collecting data is not enough; a CCIO should understand the bigger picture and have a stategy that allows appropriate sharing of information and interfaces to use data intelligently to save clinicians time whilst ensuring patient information aids their treatment and recovery. This data should then allow quicker and easier audit and quality assessment and ensure appropriate payment against contract.
We in IT provide a service to our customers - the clinicians, without Clinical Input there is no Customer requirement specified so how can we possibly ever achieve Ecellence in Customer's eyes?
Realism needs to be brought into the process, with small incremental steps at a local level taking the place of giant national leaps backwards.
The CCIO (CMIO) here in the US, serves to bridge the gap between the IT and clinical sides. More often than not, these members have utilized the systems frequently pushed down to the end-users and experienced the frustrations first-hand. From this frustration they arise to fulifill a much needed role, most often without additional compensation.
It is imperative that health-care organizations, serious about their success in implementing any IT solution, creates a role and fills it with a qualified, competent individual who can guide them through this process articulating the needs of both the clinical and IT technical side. Good Luck EHI! I am behind you too from across the pond.
Clinical leadership of IT is essential to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past and bring healthcare IT into the 21st century.
Delighted to see this campaign receive the level of support it so richly deserves from so many of the Royal Colleges and other professional groups. The change that the campaign will hopefully bring about is long overdue. Well done to EHI for organising.For what it%u219s worth, as a public health doctor and registered health informatician, I fully support the campaign.Better intelligence = better decisions = better healthDr Brendan O%u219BrienUKCHIP Level 3
We at Citadel Events believe that involvement and ownership is key to successful projects. As a recognised leader in the organisatio
Large scale IT projects continue to fail to realise their full potential and return on investment more often than not because clinic
Patient outcomes are being dramatically improved around the world through the effective use of clinical information systems; linking
When eHealth Insider launched the EHI CCIO Campaign back in the summer, information was not at the top of the NHS policy agenda.
Since then there have been a slew of government announcements about linking up, sharing and publishing data.
Just this week, there have been major announcements about linking secondary care and primary care data and sharing it with the NHS and the private sector to boost innovation and the life sciences industry.
There have been renewed commitments to give patients access to their records and the publication of 60 – count ‘em –goals against which NHS outcomes will be measured and commissioners and providers held to account. Information now, more than ever, really matters.
The growing importance of information
It was in this changing policy context that EHI interviewed Mike Farrar, chief executive of the NHS Confederation about his support for the EHI CCIO Campaign.
The Confed, as it is popularly known, represents NHS organisations, but is viewed as the voice of senior management and chief executives.
It was an early supporter of the campaign to encourage every NHS organisation to consider appointing a chief clinical information officer to lead on IT and information to improve patient care. But Farrar said this week’s initiatives underscored the need for NHS providers to appoint CCIOs.
Speaking on the day that Andrew Lansley announced the updated outcomes framework – with those 60 quality indicators - he said: “It is interesting to talk about this on today of all days.
“We fully support [the indicators’] use in helping us to understand the business of healthcare delivery. But we do not underestimate the effort that will have to go into populating the data.
“I think it is essential that trusts have CCIOs. For the data to be meaningful it has to be clinically owed and accepted.”
Speaking from experience
Farrar speaks from experience. Formerly the chief executive of NHS North West, he has been at the leading edge of measuring quality in the NHS for some years.
He was involved in developing the Quality and Outcomes Framework in primary care and led NHS NW’s Advancing Quality work.
Launched in 2008, this aimed to make sure that patients had a better overall experience in hospital and involved, among other things, collecting data on clinical outcomes, patient reported outcome measures and patient experience.
It was the first programme of its kind in the UK and can be seen as the forerunner to the new outcomes framework for the NHS as a whole.
“We found throughout this work that if we did not put effort into getting clinical support for the metrics and reporting, we came unstuck pretty quickly,” Farrar said.
“If people do not trust the data then the point about using it to understand performance is clouded. Instead of looking at performance, people say they do not understand or do not own the data. Connecting with clinicians is hugely important.”
NHS North West did some work to develop clinical informatics leadership by connecting clinicians who were coming through the Clinical Leaders Network developed by the Department of Health with their counterparts in the National Programme for IT in the NHS.
The resulting HICAT (Health Informatics Clinical Advisory Team) still exists and in addition to local work has produced some nationally influential leaders such as Amir Hannan, a GP and passionate advocate for giving patients access to their own healthcare records.
“They are great demonstrators of the potential value of clinicians being pre-eminent in informatics,” Farrar said.
Interestingly, the Clinical Leaders Network is now in discussion with NHS Confederation about forming a formal network.
“Traditionally, the Confed has been the voice of senior managers and chief executives,” Farrar explained. “The future of the Confed needs to be much more friendly and relevant to senior clinical leaders and of regarding management and clinical functions as having a common, shared purpose.”
Generating efficiencies
It is not just the informatics agenda that requires clinical engagement, though. There is the aspect of getting clinicians to use technology and to embrace changes in their working patterns that enable technology to deliver efficiencies.
“If you think that technology and hardware are an end in themselves you are also going to come unstuck fairly quickly,” Farrar said. “Platforms have to be about improving clinical outcomes and engagement of clinicians very quickly prompts the question of how will this improve care?”
He believes that the NHS does need to invest in technology and CCIOs not just to improve patient care but also to deliver efficiencies.
The health service, of course, needs to deliver “unprecedented” efficiency savings of £20 billion over four years, to meet a gap between flat funding and rising demand and costs. And it has been challenged to do it by using quality, innovation, productivity and prevention initiatives.
Farrar knows that the financial constraints are real. But he pointed out that: “Any other industry facing the scenario that the NHS faces would be pulling technology through faster to help them meet the challenge.”
And this is what the NHS Confederation brings to the EHI CCIO Campaign party. “This is an enormous challenge and one of the reasons why the Confed is an important voice in this campaign,” Farrar argued. “We are able to say to managers and leadership organisation that they need to raise their eyes above the parapet.
“My view is that you could get a strong return on investment by appointing a senior clinician into a CCIO role. It is a way of adding value. A CCIO can give you a return by improving your knowledge, delivering better outcomes and better patient experience.”
