GP IT Futures Programme
NHS Digital comissioned OpusVL to develop a usage and time-based
billing solution to automate tri-party billing. This now underpins the
'GP IT Futures' programme, invoicing 200 centrally-funded services from
70 suppliers to 7,500 GPs.
The Client
NHS Digital is the National information and technology partner to the health and care system, using digital technology to transform the NHS and social care.
The Brief
Our joint project goal was to create a time-based billing system that automatically accounts for any changes that would happen throughout a contract, processing the highest resolution data in real-time therefore reducing the need for later adjustments.
"OpusVL understood what we wanted. We asked for an invoicing solution, not your standard implementation of an invoicing package."
In the past, suppliers and customers would use the GP System of Choice (GPSoC) process which relied on spreadsheet data being sent to the NHS Digital finance team for aggregation and load.
Finance operations involved issuing forecasted invoices to suppliers ahead of time, then processing GP submitted data, when available, to apply debit or credit adjustments retrospectively.
"OpusVL are experts in open source with Odoo. The use of open source technology is something the NHS is ready to embrace. Simply because it makes interfacing to it from the outside world much easier because it is open standards."
We understood that this shouldn't be a short-term solution, but
strategic, which NHS Digital and the health and social care sector could
have control over and build upon for years to come, created and
implemented using the Open Digital Approach.