ISD Scotland has been a business operating unit of NHS National Services Scotland (formally known as the Common Services Agency) for more than 40 years. It provides an essential support service to NHS Scotland and the Scottish Government Health Department, advising on how best to use information and Information Technology to ensure efficient and effective delivery of patient care.

From the very beginning of the National Health Service (NHS), staff that provide care and treatment have collected information about individual patients. Collected locally, this patient information is managed centrally by ISD Scotland. It is used to inform research, support decision making and stimulate debate.

ISD Scotland works in partnership with a wide range of organisations, including NHS Scotland Health Boards, general practitioners, local authorities, voluntary organisations and academia.

It publishes ‘official’ statistics through topic-based pages on its web site under UK Office for National Statistics arrangements. It also makes data available through a range of other media in support of planning, performance management, policy development and resource allocations. Bespoke analyses of information held in databases are also provided.

Peter MacIntyre is both the organisation’s Business Excellence Manager and its Quality Assurance Officer. He is responsible for assuring senior management that correct procedures are followed with regard to the organisation’s work on the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) model. He is also responsible for the implementation of the model, and has recently led the organisation’s successful attempt to gain the EFQM ‘Committed to Excellence’ Award, which is administered by Quality Scotland.

Peter is currently engaged in providing support for the organisation’s participation in the ‘Recognised for Excellence’ programme. A crosscutting ‘Improving Performance Group’ has been established to act as a focus group with the aim of taking forward the continuous improvement initiative.

ISD looked initially at the BPIR.com web site to establish areas of interest. They found the Self-Assessment, Award Winners and Tools sections of particular interest.

Peter said, “Even though we have made great strides forward in terms of business excellence, it is still a challenge to get people to think about using improvement tools or practices that are commonly used in the private sector. To engender change, we are constantly questioning our staff to see if a particular process or activity is a best practice or if it can be improved. This is where we see that BPIR fits in. It provides an easy mechanism to learn from other organisations.

What we particularly like about BPIR is the way we can search the BPIR databases through the perspective of the EFQM Excellence Model. This is very useful for us, as our staff are already familiar with the EFQM Excellence Model and so it helps them when searching for information on the BPIR site.

One of the BPIR self-assessment tools that we really like is the Benchmarking Maturity Grid. We are soon going to have a meeting to assess how mature our organisation is at benchmarking, so that we can put steps in place to improve in this area.

Now that we are committed to the ‘Recognised for Excellence’ programme, we will certainly be looking to BPIR.com to provide us with the advice and guidance necessary to support our efforts.”