Overview
Background
The Practice Management System (PMS) is the software supporting the commercial clinical activities at the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies. It is Integral to the business as it holds client records, patient details, laboratory results, case records, referring practice details and financial records. it is also essential for research purposes and undergraduate and postgraduate teaching.
The current PMS is Tristan. The system providers have withdrawn from the veterinary sector. The system is currently unsupported and has had no developmental work for over 4 years. The software is hosted on University of Edinburgh Servers. The software is viewed on either supported desktops or “kiosks”. The kiosks are PCs which allow Tristan program access only. The Tristan platform contains 8 MSSQL Server Databases, the largest of which is the Small Animals database, holding around 60,000 animal records. Approximately 20,000 apppointments per annum take place, of which approximately 70% are for referred cases; approximately 3000 clients are added to the database each year.
A project was initiated in 2015 to procure a replacement Practice Management System (MVM009). The outcome of the procurement was the selection of the Provet Cloud solution.
This project was initiated to implement the selected solution.
Scope
The scope of this project includes:
- Implementation of the new Practice Management System (Provet Cloud)
- Integration with EASE and Identity Management (IDM) *
- Provision of local instance of UoE data for subsequent reporting and business intelligence capability
- Agreement on business continuity arrangements
- Review of incident escalation and support model including revised Operating Level Agreement (OLA)
- Review and update of Equality Impact Assessment (EQIA)
* to be confirmed during analysis
Objectives
The objective of the project is to implement Provet Cloud, a new Practice Management System (PMS) to replace the current Tristan system within the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies.
The implementation will be rolled out across nine functional areas:
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General Clinical
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Clinical Record
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Pharmacy & Stock Control
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Accounts & Finance
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Research
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Management Information
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Easter Bush Pathology
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Dairy Herd Health and Productivity Services
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Diagnostic Imaging
Deliverables
The project will implement a new Practice Management System (PMS). The Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies, IS Campus IT, and IS Applications Division with work together with 3rd party supplier Finnish Network Solutions (FNS) to implement the solution (Provet Cloud) to accommodate the business and functional requirements, and the non-functional elements required to deliver the service eg EASE, IDM, Business Continuity.
The deliverables of the project are:
- Continuing the Project Governance arragements agreed within the MVM009 procurement project (subject to review with Project Sponsor)
- Implementation of agreed software package Provet Cloud with FNS
- Access to demo and production environments for Provet Cloud
- Access to local encrypted copy of Provet Cloud application code under ESCROW arrangements with verified unencryption procedure
- Configuration, Authentication and Integration
- Data migration from existing Tristan databases and filestore to Provet Cloud platform
- Integration with EASE
- Integration with IDM - feed from IDM to Provet (tbc)
- Customer functional and data review including testing of functionality within Provet Cloud
- Staff functional training
- Staff technical training
- Cutover planning and preparation
- Updated EQIA
- Updated OLA
- Deployment to LIVE
- Post live support by FNS
- Phase 2 deliverables (including access to local copy of raw UoE data, replicated to Provet Cloud, additional customisations not required for initial go live)
Benefits
The implementation project will deliver intangible benefits including:
- Ongoing engagement with key stakeholder groups within the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies
- Ongoing relationship building between IS Applications and the College of Medicine & Veterinary Medicine
Which were developed as part of the procurement project.
There are also significant financial and reputational benefits related to the avoidance of running costs of the existing system, the avoidance of uncertain future costs associated with the failure of the existing legacy system.
Tangible benefits (primarily workflow and staff efficiencies) are expected in the following areas:
- Optimisation of data entry to allow accurate recording and support of reporting requirements (including comprehensive use of VeNOM terminology or similar fixed terminology where VeNOM not available).
- More efficient access of patient images and minimising errors via integration with Picture Archiving and Communications System (PACS) and delivery of a Radiology Information System (RIS).
- Charge capture, more rapid reporting, and minimising errors by integration with relevant equipment such as hospital and Edinburgh Pathology (EBP) / Dairy Herd Productivity Service (DHHPS) analysers and drug dispensing units.
- More efficient communications and enhanced client care via email and text capability, management of reminders, provision of estimates and healthcare module.
- Enhanced referring vet care and communications.
- More responsive updates and reduction in staff effort due to enhanced pricing update procedures.
- More efficient accounting and insurance claims management.
- More efficient information retrieval due to removal of duplicate client, animal, referring vet and user information during data migration process.
NB it is not possible to baseline the current costs of the above.
Success Criteria
The overall success criterion for the implementation project is:
- Delivery of the new Practice Management System (Provet Cloud) Phase One functionality summer 2017 with effective go live end of July / start of August 2017.
- Delivery of agreed Phase Two by end of calendar year 2017.
- Engaged stakeholder groups (Provet staff / student users) that have contributed and committed to assisting with the delivery of the new product, and will seek to engage with continuous improvement post-implementation.
- A positive working relationship with the 3rd party supplier FNS to ensure that the solution is scalable and meets the needs of RDSVS for the agreed length of the contract.
- System is performant and service availability meets target agreed in Service Level Agreement with 3rd party supplier.
- Delivery of a structure upon which a biobank facility can be supported (this is a future but essential development).
- Comprehensive audit trail of activity and changes.
- Comprehensive and accurate data migration removing the requirement to refer to access Tristan for legacy data.
- Duplicate and redundant information (client, animal, referring vet, user) removed.
For RDSVS staff users, success criteria will be:
- All staff users adequately trained in the functions of the system to perform their roles at go live.
- Organisational structure and staff roles defined in order to support new functionality within the system, including ongoing developments and new releases.
- Improvements in workflows and staff efficiencies throughout the business.
- More widespread system access with the solution accessible on multiple platforms.
- Comprehensive reporting and analysis capability for administrative users allowing better and more rapid analysis of hospital and service performance via management information.
- Enhanced pricing update procedures.
- Comprehensive clinical research capability with appropriate interfaces for undergraduate, staff and advanced researchers.
- Ability for ambulatory staff to carry out essential veterinary activities off site and off line, with ability to subsequently synchronise updates to the system when connected.
- Reduced local system management overheads due to Integration with EASE and the Identity Management System.
- Development of a continuous improvement plan in line with the Provet development roadmap.
For all other staff and student users, the success criteria will be:
- No perceived loss of service during the migration period.
- Clear guides for the use of the new system available on go live.
- Enhanced undergraduate experience (contribution to case management).