CACI and North Bristol NHS Trust collaborate for NHS Nightingale hospital Bristol project

At the beginning of April 2020, North Bristol NHS Trust (NBT) was asked by NHS England to host the new NHS Nightingale hospital being built at the University of the West of England’s (UWE Bristol) Frenchay campus. In addition to hosting the Nightingale Bristol, they needed the ability to fulfil both operational and financial reporting and the statutory submissions of core Inpatient Commissioning Data sets.

As a valued customer of CACI and large user of the CACI NHS Data warehouse InView, NBT turned to our Business Intelligence (BI) team to implement a solution that would meet the statutory requirements within a critical timescale. The solution would need to produce key statutory reporting as well as integrate with the trusts existing processes and reporting toolset.

Implementing the right solution in a small timeframe

To meet the requirements and timetable, CACI knew the best solution would be to implement a version of the trust’s data warehouse environment, specifically for the Nightingale Bristol data. This solution would provide a consistent set of data structures that trust staff understood and allow for the re-use of existing outputs already in use.

Taking this approach would mean using InView, which CACI had been appointed to implement in 2017 and had been successfully live at the trust since 2018. As InView is modular by design, CACI could quickly implement all of the key elements need to meet the functional requirements for the Nightingale Bristol.

As CACI maintains InView to national standards, this would give the trust the ability to group the data as standard and produce statutory CDS submission out of the box. Alongside this, by using the same data structures to the trust’s data warehouse, the solution would be able to re-use existing processes for processing SLAM files and reporting data, using the trust’s current reports and dashboard applications

The CACI BI team managed the implementation of the project on behalf of the trust and provided the support through the user testing process.

What NBT have to say

Based at UWE Bristol’s Exhibition and Conference Centre, the NHS Nightingale Hospital Bristol is hosted by North Bristol NHS Trust (NBT) and staffed by people from many NHS organisations across the south west as well as volunteers. It will provide up to 300 intensive care beds for people with COVID-19, if local services need them.

Speaking to the CACI team about the project, David Hale, Assistant Director of Informatics: Business Intelligence (NBT) told us:

“As part of hosting the regional Nightingale response, North Bristol NHS Trust engaged CACI to support the development of our statutory data processing and reporting via their InView platform. CACI’s response was immediate and comprehensive. CACI representatives formed part of an expert virtual team – spanning multiple organisations – working solidly for three weeks to enable the Nightingale Bristol facility to become operationally ready on time. The success of CACI’s involvement emphasises the importance of excellent relationships and close collaboration when faced with an urgent need. We thank CACI for their valuable support and partnership as part of North Bristol NHS Trust’s Nightingale response.”

You can find out more about our work with NBT here, or to find out more about the actionable insight solutions we provide across the NHS, visit our healthcare page.