Countess of Chester Hospital becomes national pilot site for patient flow technology
Centralised Care Co-ordination Centre Model, launched in partnership with TeleTracking Technologies, helps to more efficiently manage beds, patients, staff and equipment
The Countess of Chester Hospital NHS Foundation Trust will become the first hospital in the country to trial the centralised Care Co-ordination Centre Model with the use of new tracking technology to more efficiently manage its beds, patients, staff and equipment.
The Model Hospital programme will partner with TeleTracking Technologies to install more than 4,000 infra-red sensors above hospital beds and doorways that read from small tracking devices on patients, staff and equipment.
This will provide real-time information for live ward electronic bed boards and a centralised Care Co-ordination Centre that supports staff in getting patients to the right beds more efficiently.
The technology also automates workflows, certain domestic duties, and discharge processes to allow NHS staff to spend more time with patients instead of on administrative tasks.
The reality is that if we can reduce length of stay for each and every patient by just a few hours it gives us an additional 20 beds a day, which is much-needed capacity delivered through more-efficient working instead of spending
Work will begin on implementation in the North West hospital in January.
The Countess of Chester NHS Foundation Trust, in partnership with TeleTracking Technologies, will be the national learning site for NHS Improvement supporting patient flow software implementation as part of the National Elective Care Plan recommendations.
Tony Chambers, trust chief executive, said: “We’ve spent the last year delivering an efficiency programme based on the recommendations of Lord Carter, placing a greater emphasis on using transparency of data to inform decision-making that benefits patients.
“We see this as a flagship project in turning around our approach to patient flow and providing faster, safer care by increasing the responsiveness of our NHS workforce.
“The visibility of this data it will put a stop to nurses wasting valuable time searching for equipment and limit duplication of efforts in clinical admission staff repeatedly chasing updates on patient status to understand bed availability.”
He added: “The reality is that if we can reduce length of stay for each and every patient by just a few hours it gives us an additional 20 beds a day, which is much-needed capacity delivered through more-efficient working instead of spending.”
We are looking to a number of trusts to test patient flow software and centralised co-ordination as an approach to optimising the capacity they have to treat patients across both emergency and elective pathways
And Doctor Julia Fishman, vice president of clinical strategy at TeleTracking Technologies, said: “We are delighted to be part of the framework supporting The Countess of Chester Hospital NHS Foundation Trust in its adoption of real-time tracking solutions, and to be involved in the national pilot that is revolutionising patient flow in this country.
“Going forward, NHS bodies will be able to procure TeleTracking’s solutions quickly and more cost-effectively to deliver high-quality, timely co-ordination of care across their facilities.”
Bernard Quinn, director improvement programmes at NHS Improvement, added: “We are looking to a number of trusts to test patient flow software and centralised co-ordination as an approach to optimising the capacity they have to treat patients across both emergency and elective pathways.
“We welcome The Countess of Chester Hospital NHS Foundation Trust in testing this approach and we look forward to working with them as one of the national pilots.”