How to deploy Risk management in the NHS using Asana (Case study: NHS Kettering and Northampton)

NHS Kettering and Northampton were looking for a trust-wide solution away from spreadsheets and to have consistency between projects and departments. That is where Asana and their partner in deployment, us at Generation Digital, came in. 

The rollout began, as it always does, with a discovery call where we uncovered detailed pain points of their current ways of working and got to know their trusts’ unique ways of working. This first call was focussed around Jenn Towers, Chief of Staff to Group CEO, Becky Taylor, Group Executive Director of Transformation and Quality Improvement and Steve Bryden, Head of Group Delivery. 

What we are doing and where to find us at Rewired:

If you want to learn more about Becky’s work or Asana, come to our booth, G14, on the second floor of the event.

On Tuesday, 14 March – from 12:30 – 13:15 – to “Spotlight on Improving Clinical Workflows”, Becky will be talking at the Best Practice Showcase Theatre. During her slot she will be discussing how Asana has led to a Data-driven workflow management and planning, gaining clarity and control across her trust. NHS Kettering has also been tightly aligned with Northampton NHS Trust to help develop and improve their workflows. To listen and discover their use case, make sure to book a slot at our Best Practice showcase or come to our stand at G14 in the London Business Design Centre.

Initial Asana Setup:

One of the main difficulties we discussed was the trust being split over two locations and effectively being ‘two businesses’ that had only joined recently. They desperately needed to set conventions and a standard tool for collaboration and reporting as they had mismatches in monitoring and measuring. Asana being a ‘single source of truth’ solved this; we set up teams and projects with visibility (and privacy when required) and set trust-wide conventions to ensure consistency in ways of working and reporting.

Integrations and Reporting:

Additionally, they needed to build a complete reporting system and top-level view to flag problems and achievements. With this, we decided on standardized custom fields and set up templates to feed into Asana’s reporting system. Using Asana’s API, they are also building a custom integration with Power BI (their preferred method of NHS reporting to stakeholders). 

Much of the reporting required was focused on patient safety and risk measurement, which is a vital part of any NHS trust and needs accurate recording and monitoring. We used project templates to standardize the risk projects throughout the trust and to minimize work about work.

Forms and intake projects:

As well as risk management, other teams around the trust were included as a part of the onboarding, such as the Facilities Department. They had projects and aims related to sustainability they wanted to view in Asana called the ‘Green Plan’. This included work around Carbon Management, Resource Efficiency, Air Pollution and Food Waste. We set up projects to monitor the progress on each of these, as well as a suggestions intake project with a form for new Sustainability idea submissions.

With the programme manager for the Transformation and Quality Improvement Team, we built a way to monitor and categorize internal Audits for discussion and delegation. 

The outcomes from our time together:

“We now use Asana every day to plan and deliver our strategic projects and portfolios. Asana allows us to have one version of the truth that is accessible to our organization in a very agile way.” explains Steve Brydon, Head of Group Delivery for Transformation, “We get better engagement as the effort to know what your role is, and subsequent expectations are easy to understand. Updating progress is also really quick and much simpler than before, keeping the programmes moving forward.”

Kettering and Northampton are still onboarding more people and teams throughout the trust and have just added another 125 licenses to their instance due to demand.

Rewired 23:

Group Executive Director of Transformation and Quality Improvement at National Health Service Rebecca ‘Becky’ Taylor will be speaking on behalf of Generation Digital and Asana at Rewired23.

On day one or Rewired – from 12:30 – 13:15 – to “Spotlight on Improving Clinical Workflows”, Becky will be talking at the Best Practice Showcase Theatre. During her slot, she will be discussing how Asana has led to a Data-driven workflow management and planning, gaining clarity and control across her trust. NHS Kettering has also been tightly aligned with Northampton NHS Trust to help develop and improve their workflows. To listen and discover their use case, make sure to book a slot at our Best Practice showcase or come to our stand at G14 in the London Business Design Centre.