Compass Gets Lost
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- Published: Thursday, 03 August 2023 07:44
- Written by Peter Ingle
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Aficionados of expensive, unreliable, and user unfriendly platforms, will be saddened to hear that Compass, the NHS Business Service Authorities portal is on borrowed time.
Renamed Compost by GDPUK readers, it first appeared in 2016 and has lived down to the reputation established by many other NHS IT projects.
Famed for being taken offline at crucial times and contributing to dental team stress levels, it has caused particular difficulties at UDA year end when contractors are trying to see if they will achieve their targets.
As GDPUK readers login to Compass to see if their year-end review letters are up, there may be some good news. NHSBSA has announced that a new contract management system is being developed for NHS dental services. The NHSBSA website tactfully describes the new arrival as being “long-awaited.”
In a similar vein, Senior Business Systems Lead for Dental Services Mark Yarnton said, “Since the introduction of Compass in 2016, we have worked hard to continuously improve our processes and online systems.”
The new system will be developed by Accenture. With revenues in 2022 of 61 billion dollars, the Dublin based company has a client list including Barclays, Adidas and Unilever, and is in a different league to the developers of Compass.
Before practice managers start to celebrate it should be pointed out that plans are currently in the very early stages. While NHSBSA has promised to update stakeholders as the project progresses, it refers to this happening, “over the coming years through to delivery, implementation, and the live role out stage.”
Referring to the new platform, NHSBSA say that, “This will mean users will have a modern and easy to adapt platform that will support dentistry professionals and organisations with processes and payments.” They add: “Our aim is to improve the user experience by streamlining day to day activities for dental professionals, commissioners and NHSBSA colleagues.”
The new supplier will be working to establish user needs to influence the design of the new system. Those wishing to share their thought on what a fit for purpose platform might look like will be interested to know that NHSBSA has set up a research group to review how the new system could “improve user experience”. Providers, performers, commissioners and dental practice managers are invited to take part in the research. If interested, they should complete a survey at Professional Research Panel (snapsurveys.com) and NHSBSA may get in touch at a later date.
Practices should hold on to their stress balls as the announcement concludes with the advice that, “All users will continue to use Compass as normal until the new system launches.”
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