Event / HFMA London Branch Innovation and digital technology award winner 2023 lunch and learn session, Zeeshan Muhammad

Zeeshan developed a Costing Reporting Dashboard on Qlikview platform called ‘NCC App’ in 2021-22 and rolled-out to Acute Provider Collaborative (APC (4 Acute trust in NWL ICS)), that includes National Cost Collection’s (NCC) published data and its analysis for past 4 years, which has been instrumental in supporting the objectives of the NWL Acute Provider Collaborative business plan.

Here are the salient features of the App

• Provides activity counts, MFF adjusted actual costs, expected costs, National cost Index(NCI) and Variance by ICS, STP, Sector, Trust, POD Groups, TFC Groups, HRG with option to avoid suppressed activity
• Dynamic filters can be applied across all 4 years with unified approach to provide focused view of selections with lightning fast result
• Trend analysis includes activity counts and unit costs changes year-on-year and respective comparison with base-year (2019-20) by Trust, POD, TFC, HRGs-useful to identify the big movements while unit cost analysis can be used as a tracker to monitor the performance.
• ICS high-level graph with drill-down functionality presents the deviation from expected NCI (i.e.100).
• POD Group summary analysis shows grouping into relevant sources to allow focus of specific filtering, while Speciality analysis can be found on TFC Group summary.
• NCI Pivot Analysis by POD and TFC shows overall TFCs’ NCI and its breakdown by POD to identify the underperforming and overperforming POD/TFC combination.
• Custom report is aimed at providing benchmarking across organisations with default comparator (national average).
• Drill-Down report provides the detailed view by POD, TFC and HRG with average unit cost and national average and is useful in identifying the major contributors to fav/(adv) variance.
• Further analyses include Exceptional reports, Excess Cost Report, Top 50 HRGs, Unit cost and Activity Reports with added advanced filters on Cost/Activity/Unit Cost Groups
• Market share analysis shows the percentage activity contribution by POD, TFC and HRG
• The tool skilfully uses an index that calculates how far adrift the data being review is away from the national average

Uses of NCC App;

• NCC App has helped inform key decisions such as to invest in the Elective Orthopaedic Centre and in largely adopted at LNWH to help with productivity and efficiency planning.
• Costing analysis for last 4 years is readily available to APC to benchmark the financial health with relevant peers, ICS or national average (default). This has meant the Acute organisations can readily understand overall efficiency opportunity of Collaborative, plus the areas to focus on which show the biggest variation to national average costs. 
• NCC App helped identify the targeted areas from financial perspective for deep dive and prioritisation to drive out efficiencies and it has helped stakeholders’ engagement.
• The platform enhances our understanding of the direct drivers of areas of unwarranted variation and the platform is more dynamic than the other tools such as the model health system as it enables the user to easily compare with specific organisations drilling down as far and HRG level.