Established in 1995, the National Health Service Litigation Authority (NHSLA) is responsible for handling negligence claims made against NHS bodies in England. The NHSLA indemnifies NHS Trusts against claims for both clinical and non clinical negligence. The NHSLA is a Special Health Authority and, therefore, part of the NHS.
The Challenge
Following a period of rapid and continuing expansion in both the size and the scope of the activities and responsibilities of the Litigation Authority, its Board of Directors realised that to be able to continue offering a high level of service to all its stakeholders, it needed to replace its ageing claims management system. The current system was reaching its capacity in terms of concurrent users; performance was deteriorating and the risk of a system failure was increasing. Additionally, the NHSLA wanted to modernise its operational systems to ensure compatibility with its financial software; to enhance communications with geographically disparate external agencies; and to improve its internal business processes and protocols.
A team comprising the Director of Finance, the IT Manager and an external IT procurement advisor drew up a comprehensive specification detailing the capabilities, functionality, capacity and performance that the NHSLA would require from a new claims management system, which was subsequently put out to tender.
The Solution
Following a thorough tendering process involving interviews, reference sites visits and extensive discussions, from approximately 80 companies that expressed an interest in tendering for the contract, the NHSLA selected Dorset Software. Based on its suggested solution, which very closely matched the NHSLA's requirements, its price, its capabilities and its expertise Dorset Software was awarded the contract to develop a Claims Management Solution, an intranet, an extranet, a public website and 3 year's support of the system worth approximately £1.4 million.
Dorset Software worked closely with the NHSLA to undertake the complete analysis and re-design of the Authority's business processes. These processes were incorporated into the workflow of the Claims Management System (CMS) which now manages the litigation procedure for all of the outstanding claims against NHS bodies. The CMS is a secure web-based application that interfaces completely with the Authority's financial systems. The solution includes cutting edge digital scanning and document archiving technology. An organisation-wide intranet solution was developed to improve and manage internal communications and an extranet was also developed to allow external access to Claims information by 3rd parties. A public website for the NHSLA was also developed by Dorset Software. It is administered by NHSLA staff using a content management system.
The Benefits
The flexible and scalable solution delivered by Dorset Software offers extensive capacity, superior performance and was developed using leading development technologies. The NHSLA believes that the solution has absolutely met its expectations and has found that other, unexpected benefits have been delivered as by-products of the deployment of the new solution: extensive management tools for reporting and analysis are offering improved visibility over the organisation, the staff and their activities; transparency of business processes and protocols allow continuing improvements; departments and systems have been streamlined; and even a realisation that the web-based application will now foster a flexible working environment allowing employees to access the systems from anywhere, even home.
Technology Snapshot
Developed using Microsoft Technologies the solution consists of an intranet and an integrated web-based Claims Management System. Visual Studio.NET, C# and ASP.NET were used for the user interface; SQL Server and EMC Content Addressable Storage for data storage. Microsoft Content Management Server was used to develop and manage the public website.
