West London NHS trusts collaborate to improve patient flow
Pilot programme creates integrated care pathway between hospital and community services
Chelsea and Westminster Hospital and Central London Community Healthcare Trust are working in partnership with GE Healthcare Performance Solutions to improve the flow of patients through the hospital and at home as part of an innovative 10-month programme.
We see many opportunities with this project, in particular looking at reducing avoidable inpatient admissions from A&E, preventing unnecessary delays in leaving hospital, and ultimately making better use of our existing hospital resources
The programme will provide the community trust with better visibility of upcoming referrals from Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, making it possible for them to deploy their resources pro-actively to best meet demand.
GE Healthcare Performance Solutions will use sophisticated modelling and simulation techniques to identify frontline process efficiencies. In addition, GE Healthcare’s AgileTrac workflow and bed management software will provide real-time visibility of patients and flow across the two organisations.
Speaking at the launch event this week, David Radbourne, chief operating officer at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, said: “Our patients already have access to the quickest response times for emergency care in England, with more than 98% of patients seen and treated within four hours. Our inpatient services are also recognised as being of a very high standard and we are one of the top five hospitals in the country for better than expected mortality rates.
“But we want to continue to improve the care and experience we provide so I am delighted to be working in partnership with GE Healthcare and local health and social care partners to take a systematic approach to improving the way we manage care for patients who are kept in hospital.
“We see many opportunities with this project, in particular looking at reducing avoidable inpatient admissions from A&E, preventing unnecessary delays in leaving hospital, and ultimately making better use of our existing hospital resources. Any savings made will be re-invested into care at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital.”
This is the first programme of its type led by GE Healthcare in the UK. A similar project at St Luke’s Episcopal Health System in Houston, US, has generated savings of approximately $10m per year to date and has reduced average length of stay by 0.4 days.
Mark Ebbens, GE Healthcare principal for operational excellence and capacity management, said: “We’re helping our partners strive for what we call ‘boundaryless patient flow’, where we think about the patient journey beyond just the four walls of a hospital and identify ways the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital and Central London Community Healthcare Trust can work more efficiently together for the benefit of the patient.”
We’re helping our partners strive for what we call ‘boundaryless patient flow’, where we think about the patient journey beyond just the four walls of a hospital and identify ways the organisations can work more efficiently together for the benefit of the patient
Richard Milner, deputy chief executive at the Central London Community Healthcare NHS Trust, added: “Both Chelsea and Westminster and Central London Community Healthcare NHS Trust already had individual programmes of work in place to look at matching capacity with demand, but we had not joined ourselves up. Where GE can add great value is in joining organisations together and helping them operate at pace.”
Chelsea and Westminster is a high-performing acute hospital trust which was recently rated as the safest hospital in England by the Dr Foster Hospital Guide. The trust treats more than 360,000 patients each year.
The Central London Community Healthcare NHS Trust provides healthcare in the boroughs of Barnet, Hammersmith and Fulham, Kensington and Chelsea and Westminster. It employs more than 3,000 people to provide community services, including adult community nursing, children and family services, specialist services to help manage long-term conditions, rehabilitation and therapies, palliative care services, offender health services, and NHS walk-in and urgent care centres to almost one million people across the capital.
- Companies:
- Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS FT
- Central London Community Healthcare Trust
- GE Group
