Cheshire ICT

Central and Eastern Cheshire PCT

Central and Eastern Cheshire Primary Care Trust is the local leader of the NHS, responsible for ensuring the health care needs for its local population of 450,000. They work in conjunction with GP Practices, Opticians, Pharmacies, opticians and work closely with other local organisations, such as, local councils, voluntary organisations and third sector, in order to achieve sustainable improvements in health and wellbeing of the local population an reduce health inequalities.

Cheshire East Community Health

Cheshire East Community Health (CECH) provides a comprehensive range of community based healthcare services in patients’ own homes, GP surgeries, health centres and clinics; some working in partnership with other providers in the NHS, public and independent sectors.  CECH is committed to delivering the highest quality of accessible clinical care that is convenient for patients and is based on the needs of the local population.

CECH has a contract with Central and Eastern Cheshire PCT to provide community health services to its local population of 453,000 residents.  The geography of ‘the patch’ is spread across rural areas as well as small and larger towns and villages within the boundaries served by Cheshire East Council and parts of Cheshire West and Chester Council.

CECH is currently a Direct Provider Organisation which means that although it is still part of Central & Eastern Cheshire PCT it is quite separate in the way which it operates.

CECH continues to work with its staff to build an organisation that provides quality and excellence for its patients.  Locally CECH is actively working with partner organisations to transform community services so that an increasing number of patients are able to access their care as close to where they live as is possible.

CECH’s ICT strategy is integral to providing the most effective care for patients and Cheshire ICT Service (CICTS) supports CECH in the pursuit of its goals.

As a community based organisation CECH have very different technology requirements from, for example, a hospital based organisation, so as Head of ICT Service Development it is my responsibility to ensure that CECH’s strategic aims are met by the best use of existing and emerging technologies and translate those technologies in to workable solutions.

East Cheshire NHS Trust

East Cheshire NHS Trust was established in 2002 and provides a wide range of acute health services to the population of eastern Cheshire and the borders of the neighbouring areas of Stockport, High Peak and North Staffordshire. The population catchment area is approximately 200,000. 

The Trust has a 24 hour emergency and trauma department with inpatient services provided from three sites. The Trust also benefits from a state of the art antenatal department, cancer resource centre, day surgery facilities and newly built rehabilitation unit. They also provide a number of hospital services in partnership with other local trusts and private providers.

Western Cheshire PCT

NHS Western Cheshire commissions health services for the local population of approximately 250,000 and is responsible for ensuring local health services meet the needs of local people. The Primary Care Trust leads the local NHS (hospitals, family doctors, dentists, optometrists and community staff) and works in partnership with other organisations, such as local councils and the voluntary sector, to improve the health and wellbeing of the residents of Western Cheshire.

Community Care Western Cheshire

Cheshire HR Service

The Cheshire HR Service is a shared service providing a fully comprehensive Human Resources (HR) service to their Customers.  It is hosted by East Cheshire NHS Trust and provides HR services to East Cheshire NHS Trust, Central and Eastern Cheshire PCT, Cheshire East Community Health, NHS Western Cheshire PCT, Cheshire ICT Service and Community Care Western Cheshire.

Cheshire HR Service works closely with the Customer organisations to deliver a range of services in the following functional areas: HR Administration Recruitment, Learning and Development, HR Business Partner – strategic and operational HR, Medical Staffing and Employee Wellbeing Services. The Service aims to support their customer organisations to achieve their strategic objectives through excellent people management.

The ICT projects that the Cheshire ICT Service are undertaking with the Cheshire HR Service at the moment include:

• The provision of technical solutions to facilitate collaborative working between geographically dispersed HR teams and individuals and HR staff to get access to the information they need, when they need it, wherever they work across Cheshire;
• The implementation of an eHR solution to provide online access to key HR polices and procedures.
• The migration of all HR staff to NHSMail in order to standardise the e-mail service used by staff and to facilitate secure messaging.

GP Practices

Cheshire ICT Service provides a range of technical services to support 92 GP Practices within NHS Western Cheshire and Central & Eastern Cheshire Primary Care Trust. The GP Practices vary in size and location from relatively small rural based, single-handed practices to the larger medical centres based in urban areas that incorporate over 10 GPs, a variety of community health care teams and several support staff. There are over 5 different GP information systems in operation across the Cheshire ICT Service footprint requiring diverse expertise throughout the service delivery teams to support and maintain each and every Primary Care Health Care Team.