Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust

When it comes to governance, healthcare is no different from any other industry – efficiency is everything. For the Salisbury NHS Trust, moving towards a more streamlined and effective solution for meeting administration was a game-changer. Enter iBabs, the board portal tasked with revolutionising the Trust’s “labour intensive” processes.

Salisbury NHS Trust’s Head of Corporate Governance, Kylie Nye, is a dedicated professional with more than a decade of work in the NHS on her CV. This means she is no stranger to the complexities of governance in the health sector. And, in iBabs, she found an ally that turned administrative hurdles into stepping stones towards success.

The challenge

Prior to the introduction of iBabs, the trust was using an outdated process of manual PDF creation and email distribution for their board papers. This proved time-consuming during preparation for trust board and committee meetings, especially when papers were submitted late or needed corrections.

“We were receiving the papers and the members of the admin team would pull those papers together in a PDF and then send them out via email to everyone attending that meeting,” says Kylie

"You would make the bundles up, send them out via email and then someone would submit a late paper or would say ‘actually that paper is wrong’. If there were any amendments picked up or typos, it would mean having to redo all the papers again, which is quite a lengthy process... It was just a really labour-intensive process."

She also pointed to an example where an important report had been revised seven times in the lead up to a meeting, requiring administrators to edit and resend the PDF seen times to meeting attendees.

The solution

With iBabs, Kylie found a system that not only simplified the meeting process but also had the capacity to swiftly handle late submissions, corrections and revisions.  The ability to quickly change a paper, update it, and republish it turned out to be a significant improvement.

“The fact that you can go and easily change a paper, update it and then republish. That was the bit that made the difference,” says Kylie.

“Being able to log in quickly, upload a new paper, republish, and send out that notification to everyone saying, ‘please note that item 2.4 has been updated.’ That was the key thing.”

But the benefits of iBabs didn't end there. When compared to previous systems that Kylie had worked with, she was delighted with the personal touch iBabs offered in the form of on-site training. In her opinion, it was instrumental in getting the team up to speed on the system straight away/ It also meant that the team could easily impart that information onto other stakeholders within the trust as necessary.

Kylie remarked:

“I think having that personal touch of actually coming over and delivering the training was really useful.”

The Impact

Not only did iBabs simplify the meeting administration process, but it also formalised it. Kylie explained that the introduction of iBabs in their meeting procedures gave structure to their meetings and helped staff members unfamiliar with meeting administration understand the process better.

Furthermore, iBabs managed to cut down the time it took to collect and publish meeting papers by half. The tool offered a central location where senior leaders could easily access all their meeting papers, replacing the previous system of trawling through numerous emails and meeting requests. Kylie also reports that, as well as making life easier for administrators, it was easy for users to understand and implement into their meeting routines.

When asked if she would recommend iBabs, Kylie didn't hesitate:

Kylie remarked:

“I'd say that it's a really simple system to use... I have had feedback from particularly non-executive directors and other senior leaders who prefer just having all the papers in one place... it's just easier for everyone to use the one system.”