Verto – Supporting CCG cloud project management with NHS Aylesbury Vale and Chiltern Clinical Commissioning Groups  

NHS Aylesbury Vale Clinical Commissioning Group (AVCCG) is federated with NHS Chiltern Clinical Commissioning Group (CCCG). They are among the 207 CCGs across England responsible for the planning and commissioning of healthcare services for their local area. Each CCG must assess its local needs, decide on its priorities and buy appropriate services.

CCGs have to regularly report on their plans and progress to NHS England, to their local Health and Wellbeing Board and to the public in their area. Their success is measured on how much they improve outcomes.

Aylesbury Vale and Chiltern CCGs are made up of 52 member GP practices over seven localities. They serve a population of more than 530,000 and have an annual budget in excess of £670 million.

Together the CCGs seek to: “Improve the quality of services provided, the experience of patients when using those services and most importantly to improve the health outcomes for the people we serve.”

They are both part of the Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire West Sustainability and Transformation Plan (STP), which involves 27 health and care organizations: seven NHS CCGs, six NHS trusts and 14 local authorities. In June 2017 Buckinghamshire was announced as one of eight national areas to develop integrated working, known as an Accountable Care System.

What Aylesbury Vale and Chiltern CCGs wanted to achieve

AVCCG and CCCG were using a manual process to manage their many projects and programmes, both within their own organization and for their work as part of the STP. This took up a lot of time and meant they had no way to see all the projects they were involved in or the progress and outcomes each project was making.

It was particularly time consuming for them to produce reports as they had to gather information from a number of places and that was often in different formats.

The CCGs wanted to make better use of their time and be able to more easily monitor and report on all their projects and programmes.

How we’re helping Aylesbury Vale and Chiltern CCGs Achieve their goals

We started working with AVCCG and CCCG in September 2016. After we’d set up Verto, we trained their project management office team (PMO) on how to use it and how to configure it suit their needs. The PMO then rolled the training out to staff across the CCGs. They went live with Verto in November 2016.

Because the PMO were able to configure Verto to meet their specific needs, AVCCG and CCCG now have a transparent system that allows them to see the lifecycle of all of their projects and programmes. They also have standard processes that all staff work to.

With Verto being intuitive and configuration very straightforward, it has enabled us to create a common structured framework that supports project managers in the day to day running of their projects. Verto has very quickly become our central hub for all project information and the reporting ability within the system gives instant real-time data with one version of the truth.

Elaine Baldwin, Programme Manager, AVCCG & CCCG

The benefits

Verto has given AVCCG and CCCG the standard processes and visibility across projects and programmes they needed. This means they can easily monitor how each project and programme performs and measure the outcomes they achieve. They can also quickly and easily produce accurate reports, which they use to escalate and resolve issues with specific programmes as well as report on the financial savings they have delivered.

Prior to using Verto, AVCCG and CCCG had to use a number of different tools in different places to manage risk. Now they can use Verto to manage risk across all their projects, and on a corporate scale, as an integral part of their programme and project management work. This means staff only have to enter risks once, linked to their programmes or areas of work.

Now the PMO team produce a Verto update every week. This tells people what is going on with the current projects and programmes, has hints and tips to help users get the most from Verto and introduces new features, such as new reports that are available.

It can be difficult to ask people to adopt a new system and news ways of working. However, AVCCG and CCCG have found it easy to introduce Verto. They have worked directly with staff and have created a local user group so they can receive feedback and continue to develop their use of the system. Though Elaine Baldwin did stress that, “The support invested by our senior management team has been critical and instrumental in making Verto such a success.”

We continue to support AVCCG and CCCG. Together we are working towards having their version of Verto available to all the organizations involved in the Buckinghamshire Accountable Care System and eventually to the whole Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire West STP. This will give them a standard management and reporting tool. To date, Buckinghamshire County Council and Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust are using it.

To find out more about how Verto can help your CCG, Accountable Care System or STP, please call us on 0118 334 6200 or message us here.