Private sector companies have been undertaking a service line approach for a many years now. Any successful organisation in the public or private sector needs a detailed understanding of each service area and how costs compare to either revenue / income or benchmarks. SLR in health and social care takes unit costs calculated at the patient or client level and amalgamates up into specialties and divisions, with graphical user-friendly reporting. It is also about comparing cost to cost, understanding expenditure wastage from unnecessary clinical variation in episode or pathway and using output for planning purposes such as a new integrated care model. This approach is now in place in many acute, mental health, ambulance, community and social care settings.

We at In-Form Solutions have the expertise to guide your organisation through the transition into service line management and reporting, and to improve what was wrong. Our team has supported both NHS, overseas & private sector organisations through this process. In-Form have very recently supported with the planning, development and implementation of a new PLICS system at the States of Jersey where this truly covered integrated care with acute, mental health, ambulance, community and primary care.

Our team has significant experience in NHS Finance at all levels, including Reference Costing and Service Line Management and reporting. The scope of our involvement is flexible and tailored to fit your needs, ranging from diagnosis of current weaknesses through to project managing an entire transition, including the transitions taking place in the NHS Costing Transformation Programme.

We tailor our service to deliver what you require and we are able to:

• Proactively assess risk, service by service, to identify problem areas
• Analyse your costing system to identify strengths, weaknesses and identify where improvements are indicated
• Analyse current income and cost variances by service line
• Advise on integrating information flows into a comprehensive Service Line Reporting system
• Review new Information Systems
• Support mergers of different systems whether organisational or service
• Provide training and mentoring for key staff
• Provide project management support and manage implementation
• We can also provide a managed service solution for you, covering for staff temporarily or using a mixture of on and off-site working to manage your costing process for you permanently. Our team has worked with most of the leading costing software variants.

We can cover any or all of the various aspects of the process, including systems improvement and the delivery of management information design and cultural change.
The benefits of our solutions are that:

• Clinicians, manager and service leads are effectively engaged by our credible experts
• Knowledge transfer means your team's skill levels are improved for the long term
• The project progresses flexibly, in line with your workload's peaks and troughs
• Quicker implementation than is normally achieved is provided through in-house solutions.