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The Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust is the largest trust in the UK.
It provides acute services for the population of Leeds and is a regional
center for the treatment of illnesses such as cancer and heart disease.
The Trust employs more than 15,000 staff across eight sites and treats
125,000 inpatients, 65,000 day cases and 700,000 outpatients each year.
Its annual budget is more than £580 million.
"As you can imagine, the provision of supplies is crucial to this
huge organization," explains Leeds information manager, Graham Medwell.
"If we do not manage our procurement process efficiently and accurately,
we could place patients' health at risk. To cut paperwork, increase efficiency,
enforce contract compliance to realize the greatest discounts and to provide
management with accurate and timely information on procurement, we embarked
on an ‘e-commerce in action' project."
Prior to this project, Leeds' procurement environment was a tangle of
inflexible, disconnected systems (some electronic, some manual), a vast
number of suppliers, and centrally and locally negotiated contracts. In
addition, Leeds had no catalog management capability. As a consequence,
the procurement system was rife with problems. For instance:
- there was no recording of local stock levels
- the procurement process relied on paper requisitions that required
manual approvals
- 70% of purchasing bypassed the supplies department
- 30% of purchasing was out of contract
- there was a two-week cycle time between ordering and receipt of goods
- 25% of paper invoices were inaccurate
- the cost of generating each order was £30<
Thanks to Sybase technology, these and many other issues have been successfully
addressed. The Trust is now realizing a number of dramatic benefits including
cost savings of £2.8 million to date.
Key Requirements
After analyzing its existing procurement processes, Leeds determined
it needed an eProcurement system based on a common item catalog that would
work with its existing purchasing and finance systems—interfacing
with them but not affecting their normal operational performance. Among
the key requirements for this system were:
- a simple, customizable, user friendly interface
- the ability to provide the necessary control of purchasing activities
via tendering, contract compliance and requisitioning
- the ability to provide complete management information to all levels
of the organization
- minimal system maintenance, freeing the Supplies Department staff
to focus on getting the best contract prices for products and managing
purchase authorizations
- the capability to consolidate and share management information from
multiple NHS Trusts for use by strategic health authorities (SHAs) and
purchasing confederations
- the capability to share and consolidate information from the different
purchasing systems in use, without replacing them
Simply put, this meant the new system would have to provide a clean catalog,
automatic checks on contract compliance, automatic electronic order status,
electronic shipping notices and invoices, the ability to work with multiple
Trusts and multiple purchasing systems, and mobile access for requisitioning.
Leeds' initial steps in its procurement reengineering project included
the development of a catalog and a system to clean and maintain the catalogue
data. The Supplies Department also developed a database, powered by Sybase
Adaptive Server Enterprise, to provide management with access to procurement
information. It then developed modules, using Sybase PowerBuilder, to
enable online requisitioning, ensure contract compliance and manage its
catalogue of a half a million items. The system also provides management
information at all levels of the hierarchy from Trusts and Departments
to SHAs and Confederations.
Leeds and Sybase Collaborate to Web-Enable eProcurement System
Building on this initial work, and in collaboration with Sybase Professional
Services, Leeds expanded development to extend its eProcurement system
to the wider Leeds Teaching Hospitals user community via the Web. This
initiative led to the creation of SPNet.
"SPNet," explains Medwell, "is a total eProcurement, management
information and purchasing control system that provides automatic contract
compliance, extensive management information capabilities, a user-friendly
Web-based requisitioning module, a Trust and Confederation view of expenditures
at all levels, integration of current systems, mobile functionality, an
interface to tendering packages for contract generation and eTrading via
XML, email and autofax options.
"We looked at a number of potential partners to commercially develop
our in-house system," Medwell adds. "The objectives of the partnership
were to have greater reliability and move to a scalable e-portal solution
that would not only link our legacy systems within the Trust, but also
link multiple hospitals within a purchasing confederation or hub. Our
decision to partner with Sybase was based on the company's 20-year track
record of technology innovation, its commitment to open architecture solutions
that provide the data management and mobility necessary for today's unwired
society, and Sybase's extensive healthcare IT experience."
SPNet Architecture Built With Sybase Technology
The SPNet eProcurement architecture delivers a fully integrated and personalized
user interface. The solution gives multi-organization support from SHAs
and Confederations to Trusts, sites and departments. Figure 1 provides
a functional schematic of SPNet.
Figure 1: The SPNet eProcurement architecture.The specific Sybase technologies used to create SPNet include: Sybase
Adaptive Server Enterprise, Sybase Enteprise Portal, Appeon for PowerBuilder,
Sybase EAServer, and e-Biz Impact.
From a technical perspective, SPNet is Web-based with XML support and
integration to and from legacy systems via Sybase's integration architecture
as shown in figure 2.
Figure 2: SPNet IT infrastructure"Using SPNet, we can now roll out electronic requisitioning across
the Trust using browser-based technology," says Medwell. "In
addition to rolling out SPNet reporting to budget holders, we are currently
looking at how to make best use of the extra facilities the new system
offers to link procurement to clinical legacy systems."
These include linking electronic patient records to products used. A
number of areas, such as Radiology, have already begun piloting the reporting
of patient data and products used in procedures via SPNet as they happen.
"By linking patient data with the products used in a procedure,"
says Radiology Superintendent, Kevin Peters, "SPNet will provide
us with vital management information. We can also ensure that the item
catalog details are synchronized between SPNet and our radiology legacy
system, eliminating the need for manual intervention in the requisitioning
process."
SPNet Delivers Dramatic Results
SPNet has already delivered dramatic benefits across the NHS Trust supply
chain. It has slashed the total cost per order by 92%, dramatically improved
staff productivity, increased contract compliance and management and provided
better control over spending across the Trust.
"SPNet is part of the future for us," says Chris Slater, Leeds'
Head of Supplies. "We already use SPNet with other e-commerce initiatives
and we'll soon be using it to link patient legacy systems throughout the
Trust as part of the organization's comprehensive e-commerce strategy.
It's important that we implement solutions that work for us now and into
the future, as our requirements and objectives evolve and mature. Thanks
to Sybase technology and support, we are confident that SPNet will continue
to deliver substantial benefits for the Trust as well as for our patients."
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