London, United Kingdom - 16 September 2009 - 21C, specialist healthcare technology consultancy, today announced the addition of a Capacity Planner module to its portfolio of Business Intelligence (BI) tools designed to improve the planning, delivery and quality of NHS community services. The Microsoft-based set of dashboards and analyses allows PCTs to drill down into how time is spent to identify resourcing capacity and make productivity gains.

Paul Henderson, Managing Director at 21C explains, "Delivering health and social care in the community is difficult. The logistics of managing care in a hospital setting, for example, is difficult enough, but the range of issues multiplies when you are offering care through diverse routes. The nature of the healthcare profession has always meant that some people are on the road travelling to patients, spending time with patients and then having to report back on those patient visits. Our BI solution provides PCTs with an opportunity to plan for and therefore manage demand; schedule patient’s needs against the capacity and capability in teams and assess the time spent on each activity to look at news ways of improving productivity. Ultimately this helps deliver more effective services to patients – and importantly prevents people becoming patients."

21C developed the concept of an on-line tool using its BI platform because previous on-line information didn’t adapt to the exact needs of healthcare workers. Leveraging existing Microsoft tools available to PCTs, 21C provides a new platform that has the ability for those skilful enough to perform detailed analysis, but also enables people to serve themselves with information with fewer mouse-clicks; often getting from trend to detail in three clicks or less.

The technology sits on top of PCT’s existing Microsoft platforms to assess and address the information needs of its employees with minimal installation.

Henderson continued, "Our tools help staff stay better connected to clinical and business leads and lets the PCT effectively identify where improvements can be made."