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Oxford & Bucks NHS Trust

Lean Consulting for the Oxford & Bucks Mental Health Trust

Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Mental Health Trust (OBMHT) has a workforce of 2,600 staff and serves a population of 1.1m, providing care for approximately 23,000 people every year.

Challenge

Seeking to improve the cost effectiveness of its operations and the service provided to its patients, OBMHT set a goal of reducing its outstanding sales revenue to 90 days.

The existing invoicing process was plagued with errors, and up to 30% of the processing time was spent correcting these errors. Reducing debtor days would enable the Trust to release several millions in working capital for investment.

Solution

LSC Group was contracted to implement a Lean approach to improving the management of various financial processes within the Trust's Accounts Receivable department.

Working with the Finance team, LSC Group conducted a Value Stream Mapping exercise to help identify areas for improvement with the aim of reducing processing errors, administration costs and debtor days.

Benefits

Through the implementation of Lean techniques LSC Group enabled the Trust to significantly reduce processing error rates and processing time.

Specific benefits included:

  • 97% reduction in errors
  • 22% reduction in processing time
  • 20% reduction in debtor days
  • £10,000 reduction in office administration costs

In addition to these hard benefits the Trust also realised a number of soft benefits:

  • Organisational working dynamics were substantially improved
  • Project personnel were energised to further develop their careers, leading to one individual securing a senior role which was 2 bands above her existing position
  • Significant skills transfer of Lean methodology - team members' understanding went from layman to competent user
  • Improved morale across the Finance department

Whilst this engagement did see excellent hard benefits realised, the most valuable benefits lay in the cultural and capability transformation that occurred within the department.

With staff gaining new found confidence, and the belief that change can occur with senior level support, this project has helped set a foundation upon which the Trust can foster a culture of continuous improvement.