Life on Marsland on life during the credit crunch
The world is facing a financial storm. Time for NHS IT managers to batten down the hatches and make sure they’re prepared, says Iain Marsland.
“The health service may well be protected from the worst effects of the current economic woes – unless, of course a trust has money buried in the permafrost of an Icelandic bank account.”
The impact of a “credit crunch”, “economic downturn” or “recession” on the NHS is never simple. With the NHS in surplus, the government looking to spend its way out of a recession and continued above-inflation funding, the health service may well be protected from the worst effects of the current economic woes – unless, of course a trust has money buried in the permafrost of an Icelandic bank account.
However, there will be pressure on public services to demonstrate good financial practice and to ensure that the pain is felt, if not shared with, the private sector. Chief executives and chief information officers (CIOs) looking to pre-empt such scrutiny may wish to review their IT costs.
Check the support costs, think about virtualisation
A first step would be to ensure that all external support and maintenance contracts are at their most cost-effective through annual renegotiation. This will also enable CIOs to continually trim IT support contracts to meet the business requirements of their organisations and expectations of users.
Trusts could also look to rationalise their servers and workstations. Server and workstation virtualisation can offer significant cost saving opportunities in terms of data centre space, air conditioning and estate-wide electricity. In addition, there are benefits in terms of capital cost savings, environmental commitment, resilience, performance, and capacity management.
Virtualisation also increases the responsiveness of IT to business needs, by enabling rapid and simple changes in IT capacity. Desktop virtualisation, where the user environment and processing is hosted centrally and accessed by lower-powered desktop devices, can significantly reduce user support costs, technology refresh costs and electricity costs. Further efficiencies can be made by maximising the use of centralised system management tools.
Brush up on N3
Now might also be the opportune moment to check whether you are making best use of the NHS network, N3, for data and voice traffic. N3 has a comprehensive catalogue of services that have been designed to help NHS organisations take advantage of modern, robust data and voice services.
Separate, expensive links between sites can be replaced with N3 services to provide voice, data and CCTV connections. N3 also offers guaranteed bandwidth delivery for applications using the quality of service (QoS) protocol. BT – the N3 service provider – offers a free service to help evaluate local options.
Rationalise your printers
A review of printing and printers can also lead to cost savings. Efficient use of networked printers can save on consumables, paper and electricity costs. Direct cost savings may be achieved through printer rationalisation, optimisation and the implementation of print policies. The goal is to enable organisations to have more manageable and cost effective flow of printed and electronic documents.
Check out online training
NHS Connecting for Health has put in place a range of national contracts, including the Microsoft Enterprise Agreement, that are guaranteed to offer the most cost-effective solutions. However, organisations may need to centralise their local IT budgets and procurement strategies to fully exploit these national opportunities.
“Organisations that consider how to make the best use of IT when developing clinical services will be at the leading edge of cost effectiveness, whatever the economic realities.”
Training can be costly, but there are opportunities for cost savings using online or DVD training facilities. These can be used many times, across a campus – or in the case of online training, from remote sites such as people’s homes - and at any time of the day. In most cases, they are a significantly cheaper option than on-site or off-site training and more effective and flexible as well.
And plan your IT early
Not all of these costs savings can be made overnight, however, and cost-base efficiency should be embedded into the IT development strategy that supports clinical services.
Of course, cost-efficiencies are only one dimension; productivity and benefit management should all be in the mix. The need for high value IT solutions such as the NHS Care Record Service has never been greater; and provisioning these services remains a priority.
Organisations that consider how to make the best use of IT when developing clinical services will be at the leading edge of cost effectiveness, whatever the economic realities.
About the author: Iain Marsland has been in the NHS for 34 years, most recently as chief information officer for Essex Strategic Health Authority and previously as director of IM&T for acute trusts in Brighton, Sussex and Bristol. He is now an independent consultant.