Background
Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust is one of the largest Trusts providing physical health and mental health services in the North West, serving more than 11 million people and employing some 12,000 staff. They offer specialist inpatient and community services that support physical and mental health and specialist inpatient mental health, learning disability, addiction and brain injury services.
Mersey Care approached Frank as they were acquiring North West Boroughs NHS Trust, with staff and services merging on 1st June 2021.
Frank had successfully worked with North West Boroughs on their staff extranet and with the Zero Suicide Alliance who are hosted by Mersey Care.
Project
Mersey Care asked Frank to help deliver against their ambitious timescales to provide an updated website and new staff extranet for the merging organisation. Running both projects simultaneously, Frank engaged with the client to understand their requirements and priorities for the 1st June.
Public Facing Site
For the public site it was important to give users the ability to navigate according to where they live, as the broad range of services provided by the Trust are not available in all areas. Frank created a map, which then presented users with an A-Z of services available in their area.
The client also wanted to be able to display their policies and procedures on the public site, but without having to upload and maintain them in two places. Frank built an API meaning that documents appear to be on the public facing website, but they are actually managed within the Extranet CMS.
Extranet
The client wanted a bright engaging site which would enable staff to feel valued and undertake simple transactions more quickly. Highlights included:
- Policies and procedures library, with linked documents and review dates with automatic reminders to the document owner
- News feed with categories for each sub-division of the Trust
- Staff phone book with daily imports from their Active Directory, encouraging users to update their details via AD and maintaining a single source of truth
For authentication, Frank integrated with the Trust’s Azure (Office 365) tenancy. This meant that staff on the Trust network would have single sign on. Staff accessing the site outside of the network (e.g. at home or on their mobile) could access secure content by using their usual Office 365 log in.
The project was delivered in just seven weeks, in time for the merger date. The feedback has been positive and Frank looking forward to a continuing digital partnership with Mersey Care.
Client testimonial
“We worked alongside Frank to deliver two major strategic objectives, a newly designed website and extranet, for our expanding organisation. They were given a much shorter deadline than I’m sure they would have liked but delivered on time and were both enthusiastic and professional throughout the process.
They showed great technical expertise and we were especially impressed with the project management skills they displayed, keeping two difficult projects on track by holding us to account for the information they needed to deliver.
Despite the stress of the pressing deadlines, they remained personable and approachable at all times and I would have no hesitation in recommending their services to other organisations.”
- Myles Hodgson, Media Manager, Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust
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