Service Line Reporting

Urged on by Monitor and the Department of Health, NHS Trusts have expended considerable effort to meet the compliance requirements of Service Line Reporting. A large part of this has involved the collection of costs by service or department to identify profitability. There is a second and equally important aspect of the initiative, namely the engagement of clinicians, consultants and staff in the debate over cost related issues.

Omnicell makes a big contribution in both of these objectives.

Firstly by producing cost by patient and procedure it is possible to sort and analyse accurate service line costs in a way which traditional finance systems do not easily facilitate.

Secondly by giving rapid access of reliable verifiable cost data to clinical and consultant staff, discussions about clinical procedure costs are possible.

A good example is the Omnicell system working in Sheffield cardiac theatres, where, even whilst operating, Consultants are taking a keen, if slightly tongue-in-cheek, interest in the cost of their current procedure. More seriously the clinical staff in general are now involved in the discussion about how to achieve the best clinical results at the right costs, which is an objective the NHS has been seeking now for some time.

Clearly the ability to access data at patient level moves this process one step further forward and departmental costs and service line costs can be sorted and summarised from the more detailed analysis at individual patient level.