Lancashire and South Cumbria Agency (LaSCA)

Interact has enabled Lancashire and South Cumbria Agency (LaSCA) to reduce costs and streamline their business processes.

The Organisation

Lancashire and South Cumbria Agency (LaSCA) is an NHS agency serving 10 Primary Care Trusts (PCTs). They manage the PCTs patient population registers and provide administrative services to the PCTs and their NHS contractors. LaSCA employs 200 staff.

“Interact provided a cost-effective solution to enable us to record trial activity whilst maintaining the security of patient data”

Hazel Aston , Manager, LaSCA Cancer Research Network

Objective

LaSCA had already implemented Interact Intranet to manage the documentation that circulates within LaSCA. However, it became important to grant access to external users, such as PCTs and outside agencies, to information, statistics and reports.

It was proposed to couple the Intranet with an Extranet, which would allow the external users to access selected areas of the Intranet. As external users would be accessing the system, a secure solution was required.

They had also identified a requirement to improve the reservation of their meeting rooms.

As LaSCA is a public funded body, it needs to demonstrate a return on investment for any projects which are undertaken. The Intranet would have to produce reports to demonstrate how many users were accessing it and ultimately, the cost savings the Intranet produced.

The Solution

LaSCA identified Interact as the best solution to meet its objectives. Odyssey Interactive installed an Intranet and Extranet which:

Eliminates double booking of meeting rooms and resources
Allows information to be accessed by external parties via an extranet, whilst also being extremely secure
Contains contact details of external parties such as PCTs and outside agencies
Demonstrates a return on investment by reporting usage statistics
Allows non IT staff to update the Intranet
Ensures procedures documents are up to date and can be added quickly
Reduces printing costs by storing key documents such as employee handbooks and health and safety policies online
Allows cross communication between departments

As well as key features such as a staff directory, news section, search facility and staff discussion boards, Odyssey Interactive implemented the following additional modules.

The Room and Resource Booking module enables LaSCA to check on availability for and reserve meeting rooms and resources. Once a booking has been submitted, the resource’s administrator is notified via an alert. The administrator can then confirm or reject the booking. If the booking is rejected the time slot is freed up again.

The Statistics module provides LaSCA with reports on the performance of the Intranet such as views per page and visitor session lengths. These reports show LaSCA which areas of the Intranet are popular and which areas are not, as well as the amount of time employees spend using it. This helps LaSCA to make staff aware of pages that are under utilised and to better measure the time and financial savings of using the Intranet.

The Additional Contacts module allows LaSCA to store contact details of external parties, for example Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) and other outside agencies. This is in addition to the Internal Contacts core module. This solution enables LaSCA to have a centralised location for all contacts.

The Advanced Security module of Interact ensures that a secure Intranet/Extranet solution can be implemented. It allows LaSCA’s System Administrators to profile users to determine their ability to access, add, update or modify documents to their sections of the site. The profile also determines the sections of the site external users, such as PCTs and Agencies can and cannot see.

The IT Support Desk module enables LaSCA to manage internal support issues through their Intranet. They can now keep on top of enquires, ensuring that all problems and queries are handled by the right person at the right time resulting in reduced costs.

Key Benefits

Improved communication and information dissemination between departments as users have quick access to key documents and management reports.

Allows information to be accessed by external parties via an extranet, whilst also being extremely secure

Double booking of resources has been eliminated, saving time and frustration. Meeting rooms and resources can be booked in a single transaction.

The Statistics module enables LaSCA to provide reports on the cost effectiveness of the Intranet and prove its return on investment.