Ardentia, a leading provider of business intelligence solutions, has announced new advances in its cutting-edge software, which enables trusts to protect and increase their market share. Activity Flow Analytics (AFA) is about to become even faster to use, with enhanced graphics and further-improved on-screen presentation of data. Developed last year, AFA is the most affordable and advanced option for tracking patient referrals and for benchmarking mortality and readmission rates against local competitors, and across England and Wales as a whole.
Among the customers to benefit from the upgrade, which happens this spring, is West Suffolk Hospital NHS Trust which was among the first users of the system. AFA has already brought major benefits, and the information it generates is being used to support its application for foundation trust status.
Carl Kwiatkowski, West Suffolk's business and marketing manager, said: "With the changes occurring within the NHS around GP commissioning, we had to be looking at market share, not only in our core areas but the peripheral areas of the Suffolk community. Where we have invested time and worked with GPs, Ardentia has been able to identify an increase in market share. If other organisations were looking for a product that was value for money and provided ease of use, I would strongly recommend Ardentia Activity Flow Analytics."
The system was developed last year but is undergoing further improvement through the introduction of Ardentia's Cassius Vision technology. This will make the system even quicker to use, while sharper graphics will mean even better and bolder presentation of on-screen information.
Former PCT chief executive Ian Rogerson (1), now an independent consultant, commented: "The acute sector is undergoing massive change, with trusts having to move towards foundation status and the emergence of GP commissioning consortia. It is essential for business managers to be able to track which referrals are coming to them and which aren't."
"Those that do will be able to identify areas of strength and weakness and adapt their performance, protecting and even increasing their market share and the vital income that it brings. I have seen the benefits that AFA is bringing to Ardentia customers and believe that it's a highly effective solution, which meets their needs in a rapidly changing healthcare environment" he continued.
Benefits of AFA to healthcare providers include the ability to:
- Monitor patient flow between all healthcare organisations submitting data to the Secondary Uses Service (SUS), in England
- Understand market share for all services provided and track changes over time
- Identify key competitors and use in-depth analysis to identify information that would help improve market share
- Perform comparative analysis between healthcare providers across a wide range of measures by specialty and HRG.
- Benchmark nationally for mortality
- Benchmark nationally for readmissions within 30 days
- Identify areas where productivity can be improved
- Use the GIS tool to identify geographical activity patterns.
Gary Luke, Ardentia MD, concluded: "AFA was developed because there was a clear need for healthcare providers to be able to benchmark their performance and identify why they are winning or losing referrals. This is already important but will become even more so with GP consortia. Trusts need to know whether they are losing business because of a weakness in their performance, or possibly because they haven't marketed themselves effectively enough, so consortia are unaware of the excellence of their services. We believe that our system is the best and most affordable around, but we also believe in talking to our customers to find ways in which it can be further improved. The forthcoming upgrades are proof of our commitment to making sure that our systems stay ahead of the competition, allowing our customers to do the same."
About Ardentia
Since 1990, Ardentia has been providing world-class business intelligence solutions to healthcare organisations to support them in the delivery of high quality, clinically effective care to patients and health service users.
Ardentia specialises in helping healthcare organisations, using its business intelligence platform, to identify areas of clinical and financial under-performance, enabling them to reinvest resources to deliver a better, more cost effective service.
Ardentia is also responsible for the user interface of the Secondary Uses Service in England, to which all healthcare providers must submit data. This means that thousands of NHS employees make use of Ardentia's software each year, in addition to staff in the 80 plus NHS trusts that make-up its client base.
In use at all levels of the NHS, Ardentia's specialist capability delivers information to the right people at the right time, enabling decision making supported by the best available data - called 'Evidence Based Management' it is the foundation of everything the company delivers.
For further information visit www.ardentia.co.uk.
About AFA
1. Chief Executive Newcastle under Lyme Primary Care Trust from April 2002 to October 2006. He now provides consultancy services for a range of Trusts and GP's and Ardentia is among his clients.