NTPF accelerates management of 160,000 patients on waiting lists using Power Platform

The National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF) plays a crucial role in enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of Ireland’s healthcare system by facilitating quicker access to necessary medical treatments. It collaborates closely with Ireland’s Department of Health, HSE, acute hospitals, and private nursing homes across the health system.

Good work like this doesn’t come without its challenges. A vast amount of waiting list data, for example, must be constantly organized and updated to ensure that the right patient is assigned to the right hospital and receives theright specialistcare. Previously, this information management and reporting was mostly done manually through a time-consuming, Excel-based process.

To improve the way patient data sets are handled, NTPF held a series of workshops with key stakeholders.

The resounding conclusion was thata new IT system was needed to streamline data for the wide network of users– allowing them to access real-time patient information from both private and public hospitals and create custom reports.

The system also had to be watertight from a security perspective to ensure that every piece of personal data stored was protected in line with GDPR legislation. Additionally, the team concluded that the system should be developed on an existing platform rather than bespoke software for optimal efficiency and reliability.

Power Platform for scalability, security, and efficiency

To develop the new system, the NTPF initiated a competitive procurement process, appointing Dublin-based Spanish Point Technologies as the official IT partner. After conducting a thorough discovery phase, Spanish Point put forwarda plan for the Patient Access Management System (PAMS) – a comprehensive data access and case management solution.

“We recommended using Power Platform to provide the scalability, security, and efficiency that NTPFneeded for case management,” says Mark Gullick, Dynamics Lead at Spanish Point.As he explains, “An off-the-shelf solution would have required costly customization and building from scratch would have taken months. With Power Platform, Spanish Point were able to build a customized case management solution much faster and at lower price. “The use of model driven apps enabled us to design the interface at one tenth the cost of a UX designer,” says Gullick.

A minimum viable product was rapidly created, including Power Apps applications for both NTPF employees and hospital staff. “We are really impressed with how quickly PAMS went from design and brainstorming to production – and the low-code efficiency of Power Platform was a key driver of that speed,” says Eoin Darcy, Director of Information and Communications Technology.

Patient waiting list data is pulled from a SQL database into Dataverse and NTPF employees use a Power Apps application to search and select patients from the list. Here, they can also update the lists as a patient moves through the process to treatment.Hospitalscan alsomanage patients that NTPF assigns them through Power Apps.

Development in Azure DevOps provided visibility into the development process for both Spanish Point and NTPF. This, in turn, helped build confidence inside NTPF about the use of Power Platform. As Darcy explains, “As a developer, I have always been somewhat skeptical of low code. But being able to see our Power Platform applications move through development, test, and production in Azure DevOps, I have confidence that Power Platform can deliver at an enterprise scale.”

High marks for performance and security

PAMS quickly delivered beyond expectations.Just 5 months after its launch, over 30,000 ‘Offers ofCare’ had been issued to 41 public hospitals in Ireland via PAMS, 45% of which have since been accepted. The result has been significant reductions in waiting times.

The feedback from users both within the NTPF and in the external hospitals has also been extremely positive. Patient information can be accessed more quickly and efficiently, the status of patients on their journey to care is visible at each stage, and PAMS reports are being used to drive improved performance.

Equally important to both users and NTPF was data security. The organization’s Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) and Data Protection Officer were involved through the whole tendering process and the entire system has been developed to NIST security standards which, in turn, support NTPFs obligations as a data controller as set in the General Data Protection Regulation. Key security features include single sign on through Azure Entra ID and conditional access, which enables NTPF to limit views by hospitals in Power Apps toonlythe patient data relevant to them. Multi-factor authentication is also enabled.

The tight integration of Azure and Power Platform was an important factor in this development. “Working with Azure and Power Platform, we didn’t need to build security. We just needed to configure it. That drove significant time and cost savings, particularly for the security requirements of this project,” says Gullick.

Next wave

Since the initial launch in 2019, the number of patients managed through PAMS has grown from 30,000 to over 160,000. What’s more, with funding to NTPF increasing each year, more and more patients are being managed through the system. As needs have grown, NTPF and Spanish Point has used the low-code flexibility of Power Platform to rapidly expand the system and meet those needs.

This includes a new model-driven app which expands the initial system for inpatient requests to now cover outpatient requests. Employees from both NTPF and the referring hospitals have access to the app, which provides users with secure access to different views based on their role. The system now also features integration with several external systems, including a system that gathers and tracks treatment options selected by patients.Responses, which include communications sent through the postal system, are scanned and saved back to Dataverse.

Most recently, another app was added to the system which supports call center agents working with patients who have declined treatment. The app makes it easier to take notes and add any changes to treatment based these conversations back into the central Dataverse store.

Spanish Point also collaborated with NTPF developers to help them create their own Power Platform solutions in-house, all seamlessly integrated with PAMS. For example, they developed an app to track the prices that the NTPF negotiates on behalf of patients in private nursing homes. Additionally, NTPF has created several Power BI dashboards for reporting patient metrics, including reporting on the organization’s external website. As Darcy says, “PAMS is fundamental to everything we do at NTPF – and Power Platform is a key part of our system’s success.”