The National Health Service Streamlines Processes and Communication with Planview ProjectPlace

The National Health Service (NHS) has provided free healthcare to UK residents since 1948. But since 2013, it’s been on a journey of transformation. Sweeping reforms changed the organization of local healthcare delivery to patients. Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) led by family doctors and other health professionals were set up and given budgets to buy care on behalf of their local communities.

Through a transformation program called East Sussex Better Together, the CCGs and the East Sussex County Council set out to transform health and social care services to better support a population of 360,000 patients with a budget of approximately £800 million. Analysis indicated that if reforms did not occur, there would be a funding gap of 25% in four years.

Before approaching ProjectPlace, the CCGs faced five specific challenges:

1. Cross-team communications – The CCGs and East Sussex County Council lacked a central way to work closely together and get things done. With multiple groups and people involved, cross-team communications had become over-complex.
2. Scheduling meetings – Meetings are frequent in the NHS. With so many stakeholders involved, organizing a time and place for people to come together was difficult.
3. Stringent security needs – Healthcare providers must protect confidential data. At all costs. The teams needed a way to ensure information sent over networks and stored in the cloud remained 100% secure.
4. Document sharing and project visibility – CCGs must include members of the public and GP stakeholders in their processes. But the teams lacked a discrete way of sharing documentation, and granting project oversight to external stakeholders.
5. Staff skill gaps – The majority of NHS employees come from a clinical background. While some individual team members may lack specific project management skills, each team collectively needed user-friendly software to support one another in their new responsibilities.

With ProjectPlace, the NHS can set direction, communicate, execute tasks, track progress, and get work done.

For those new to project management, its user-friendly capabilities have facilitated a smooth transition into new responsibilities. With a complete overview of project goals, tasks and commitments, project management is simple and pain-free.

Arranging meetings across diverse teams is also easier than ever. ProjectPlace’s meeting tab helps eliminate scheduling complexity. Communications between the CCGs and other public bodies have been streamlined too – since employees can structure conversations around particular tasks.

External stakeholders can be readily brought in to the system. Documents can be securely shared to the ProjectPlace tool, and project oversight discreetly given.

With ProjectPlace, the NHS has:

• Improved communication among team members and diverse groups of stakeholders
• Reduced scheduling chaos with an easy-to-use meeting feature
• Streamlined document sharing and project visibility for internal and external stakeholders
• Established highly secure processes for collaboration, data storage and sharing
• Supported new project managers in their responsibilities with an intuitive, powerful project collaboration platform
• Enhanced healthcare delivery to local patients and communities