Roll-out of COA Solutions Across Scottish NHS to Contribute to Significantly Improved Service

February 2008

11th February 2008 - COA Solutions (formerly CedarOpenAccounts) has won a £3.6 million contract to supply all twenty-two Scottish health boards with a comprehensive portfolio of financial, procurement support, business intelligence and document management software solutions. This 'Health Business Suite' is being implemented as part of a drive to achieve shared services working throughout NHSScotland. The planned completion date for fully implementing the new system is March 2009.

Implementing COA Solutions software throughout NHSScotland forms part of the Scottish Government's Efficient Government Initiative and will help to deliver the Government's planned efficiency targets. NHS National Services Scotland, the body overseeing NHSScotland's move towards a common software platform is running the Shared Support Services Programme and expects the COA Solutions project to be a key enabler of the quality and efficiency gains.

John Francis, Programme Director from the Shared Support Services Programme says, "High quality health services are a key priority for the Scottish Government. To ensure this is achieved, all Scottish health boards need to work closely together and this is only possible when a common infrastructure is in place. With COA Solutions' Health Business Suite being run by all NHSScotland, the health boards will be able to more easily share staff, responsibilities and information. As well as creating a more streamlined financial service, this will free-up time and resources that can be deployed on supporting and delivering the Scottish Government's 'Better Health Better Care' Policy."

COA Solutions won the NHSScotland contract after demonstrating an in-depth understanding of the Scottish NHS market. In fact, many health boards were already using COA Solutions as Francis explains, "The majority of NHSScotland's financial transactions were already going through COA Solutions and so it made sense to build on this solid foundation and to work with COA to enhance and to extend the Health Business Suite. The software has been developed to fully support the re-engineered business processes and help deliver the identified improvements."

As well as the COA Solutions project improving NHS-wide efficiency, being able to access and analyse data from all twenty-two Scottish health boards will enable a detailed and holistic view of the health service, allowing for improved decision-making. Being able to view financial documents electronically will also free-up document storage space and eliminate both lost documents and off-site storage costs.

Five 'Consortia' led by NHS Ayrshire and Arran, NHS National Services Scotland , NHS Tayside, NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde and NHS Lothian will locally manage the implementations of the COA Solutions Health Business Suite in support of the Shared Services Support Programme. A COA Solutions user group has also been established comprising representatives from the Consortia to ensure that all decisions relating to the project are commonly agreed.

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