Although it is known for its high standards of quality, St Helens and Knowsley Teaching Hospitals trust has struggled to meet the new demands for fast, accurate information, particularly to support payment by results.

As Neil Darvill, director of informatics, explains: "With tight deadlines for payment by results, it is essential that the trust improves its information gathering and analysis to ensure all patient experiences are recorded and provided to commissioners before the deadline."

At the same time, continual requests from the Department of Health to amend systems and processes - the data set change notices - have created a massive burden on the IT team.

Having reviewed its information management processes, the trust opted for the InView management information system from CACI, using BusinessObjects XIR to deliver both reporting and dashboards measuring key performance indicators (KPI).

"The data warehouse has been designed to include every data source, including the PCT community system, child health system and GP systems eventually," Mr Darvill explains.

KPI management will be delivered via BusinessObjects Dashboard Manager, while the trust has also adopted CACI's QPR ScoreCard.

The trust has 50 users of BusinessObjects, who access theatre reports, pharmacy reports, community patient administration systems reports and medical records reports. Clinicians also receive reports to manage clinic lists, loads and preparation.

Finance, says Mr Darvill, will be a key user group, exploiting the data "to gain insight into patient and service line costing as well as payment by results".

The availability of timely information is enabling the trust to validate payment by results information prior to delivering it to commissioners. It has also transformed the speed and accuracy of reporting, turning the three days spent to create the monthly executive management report into an automated five-minute process.

Furthermore, giving senior clinicians direct access to reports has improved understanding of trends in activity and performance. Extending BusinessObjects to GPs will also enable the trust to automate information collection for them.

CACI now automatically updates InView in response to new change notices, which saves the trust a lot of time.

Mr Darvill says: "Prior to implementing the data warehouse, the trust lacked timely and accurate information." Plugging this gap, he says, creates a solid platform for change.

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