Mac ‘N’ Ease

Using macros to make routine tasks more efficient

NHS England, North West, Regional Specialised Commissioning

The problem

The specialised commissioning team needed to reduce the time burden of producing communications to providers, otherwise capacity would be stretched within the team and less time would be spent on value adding pieces of work.

The challenge

How might we improve efficiencies in the communication process so that the financial correspondence is completed more quickly thus releasing capacity within the team?

The outputs

The outputs are:

an excel file per provider ready to distribute
procedure notes for anyone to use
a macro which could be utilised in other tasks.

The outcomes

The outcomes are:

previously this work took one day a month whereas now it takes one hour
previously up to three members of the team would assist in completing this task, now it can be done by one person due to the reduced burden
it is more easily shared amongst the team, including senior managers
it opened the door for future opportunities to introduce automation and share best practice with other teams.

The Innovation

Read the full innovation on macros

All the documents and resources relating to this innovation can be found in the downloads section at the bottom of the page.

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What the peer-reviewers said

“The innovation has successfully addressed the administrative burden within the finance team each month and they have also been able to clearly quantify the released capacity from the new process adopted. The solution has also maintained providers requirements in terms of output therefore quality hasn’t been compromised.”

“This is a fantastic innovation and has seen significant efficiency as a result.”

“This a fantastic innovation and has seen significant efficiency as a result”

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