The new pathway supports the Trust realise its goal of achieving efficiency gains through greater control over the patient journey whilst simultaneously improving the patient experience.
Patients attending the Outpatients Department at Macclesfield Hospital can now check-in for their appointment using a digital kiosk, where they will be directed to the appropriate clinic waiting room. Inside the waiting room, on wall-mounted screens, patients are informed if their clinic is on-time or running late. Patients will also be called from the waiting room through to see the clinician using the wall-mounted screens.
In addition to the patient-facing solutions, the Trust has also deployed specialist staff-facing solutions. Staff now benefit from a holistic view of every patient’s progress through their journey across the department. Staff can easily see which patients have arrived, which have not checked-in, if they are in the appropriate waiting room, if they have been called to see the clinician and when they have finished seeing the clinician.
Once a patient has finished seeing a clinician, the appointment outcome is recorded digitally, and the hospital’s PAS updated. Staff also utilise a new digital booking system which ensures clinic rooms and resources are efficiently managed. Improving the clinic room and resource utilisation by providing all staff with real-time visibility and simplifying previously paper-based / time-consuming tasks, allows for available resources to be managed more efficiently and effectively than ever before.
Vicky Bond, Operational Manager Outpatients at East Cheshire NHS Trust, said: “We chose Intouch with Health for this project as they provided us with the range of functionality to enable the Trust to improve efficiency, patient flow throughout the Outpatients Department and the patient experience. We also had positive feedback from other organisations already using the Intouch Patient Journey Platform.”
“Since the go-live, staff have benefited from greater control over the flow of patients through the department and improvements in communication lines with patients (particularly any delays in clinic). Flow Manager enables our team to manage every patient’s journey efficiently, thanks to the clear, real-time and accurate status of each individual patient.”
“The combination of the Intouch solutions has provided us with the tools to implement our vision of improved patient flow and patient experience.”
Bond also discussed the importance of launching the Intouch Mobile solution later in the year, once the Trust completes the redesign of the Outpatients Department.
She said: “In response to COVID-19, the Intouch Mobile app has probably become one of the highest priorities for us. With limited space in our outpatient waiting areas, the ability to enable patients to check-in remotely and hold patients outside of the department until their appointment time will support us in recovering our outpatient clinics whilst adhering to social distancing guidance. Patients will also benefit from greater convenience when attending site, therefore helping to further improve the patient experience.”
Find out more on East Cheshire NHS Trust
East Cheshire NHS Trust is the main provider of acute and community health services for the people of East Cheshire. The trust is based at Macclesfield District General Hospital. Visit the trust’s website here: https://www.eastcheshire.nhs.uk/
