Case study

Scottish Care Information

Improving patient care by delivering an end-to-end national health care system

Scottish Care Information (SCI) is a programme established by NHSScotland to provide integrated information systems across the health service with the aim of improving patient care. NHSScotland reform is at the heart of the Scottish Executive’s agenda and ministers have committed to implementing electronic communications between GPs and hospitals across NHSScotland. PA Consulting Group has been working in partnership with NHSScotland since 1995 to deliver this vision by developing and implementing ‘end-to-end’ information systems. The award-winning GPASS (General Practice Administration System for Scotland) was the first major achievement of this partnership and is now used by over 85% of the GPs in Scotland.

SCI presents a more difficult challenge - how to provide information systems to support the whole patient journey from the GP’s surgery to hospital. It requires systems that enable information to flow electronically between different parts of NHSScotland, so that wherever the patient is being treated, the GPs, consultants and administrators can easily access the right information to deliver a high-quality, patient-focused service. The Information Statistics Division (ISD), responsible for collecting statistics in the health service and informing policy makers on how NHSScotland resources are used, was tasked with delivering this programme.

Working in partnership, PA and the ISD developed and delivered the SCI systems and supported the change, people and cultural aspects of the programme. This also involved working with other suppliers, such as SchlumbergerSema.