The NHS is upgrading NHSNet, the network that connects 4000 sites, including hospitals and GP surgeries, with Broadband connections. The upgrade will cost 45 million pounds and be carried out by Cable and Wireless, the existing network supplier. It will provide faster and more reliable connections for GPs to book hospital appointments for patients online and also ensure that patients’ details are available to clinical staff where and when they are needed. Health professionals will benefit from better access to the knowledge they need for diagnosis and decision support. The upgrade will also bring new services such as the electronic transfer of prescriptions between GPs, hospitals and pharmacists.The NHS has more than 600,000 e-mail addresses in use. Last year the monthly volume of messages sent across the NHS network increased from 76 to 106 million.
The Emergency Services Collaborative, a national programme to raise the performance of Accident and Emergency Units is using the Internet to link up 200 sites. The programme supports managers and clinicians in devising and implementing projects that will help them to achieve the NHS Plan target to clear patients admitted to Units within four hours. The 14 month long projects have start dates staged up to July 2003.Learning from one another by adoption and adaptation of successful improvements is crucial to the Programme. The Collaborative employs improvement methodology widely tested in the US and in Collaborative programmes in the UK, such as the Cancer Collaborative. Local managers analyze problems, devise solutions and then test short cycles of improvements to address specific bottlenecks and constraints. Sharing best practice with case studies available on the Internet supports this process. To stimulate expansion of the case study library as the projects roll on, there is a template for the submission of new case studies.
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The document summarizes the research carried out by iMPOWER, who were commissioned by the former DTLR to give managers a better understanding of Customer Relationship Management in the local government context. CRM is a term applied to a spectrum of strategic, operational and technical initiatives. In the context of local government it is primarily focused on improvement and integration of customer service within councils. It allows greater transparency of customer led operations and processes, improves the internal processes of the organization and supports culture change. It helps to transform service-led into citizen-centric organizations by integrating service delivery around the citizens rather than departments. It supports a vision of a single citizen-account. The Guide presents case studies showing how CRM has resulted in transformational change including better customer service, greater organizational transparency, and increased operational efficiency. It describes how a CRM strategy can be developed and how change management approaches can be implemented.Link: http://www.odpm.gov.uk
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