Pittsburgh, PA, April 24, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The Mid and South Essex University Hospitals Group (MSE) has established a new patient flow control center to provide real-time visibility of bed status and balance anticipated demand with availability in order to maximize capacity and achieve operational excellence.
The 1,150 sq ft control center, which is operational 24/7, 365 days of the year, is located in Billericay and offers the hospitals group a centralized, holistic approach to bed management. Underpinned by TeleTracking’s operational platform, a dedicated team of 52 nursing professionals will have real-time visibility of open beds across its three sites, increasing access and allowing patient flow to be managed more effectively.
Clare Panniker, chief executive of the three Trusts, explains: “As part of the planned merger of our three Trusts, we recognized that there was a significant opportunity to review existing workflows and – where appropriate – to effectively wipe the slate clean and start again. Traditional bed management processes are debilitating; nurses simply spend too much of their time chasing beds. Establishing the control center is a chance for us to examine, understand and change the root causes of the problem, reduce idle bed time and improve patient access.”
In addition to providing real-time visibility of its beds, the TeleTracking platform also allows staff across the Trusts to analyze operations, use predictive models to anticipate downstream demand, coordinate patient placement, sensor-track resources and patients, and adjust resources to changing circumstances in real-time.
“The control center represents an integrated, sophisticated approach to operational excellence and capacity management―moving away from traditional siloed point solutions,” says Neil Griffiths, Managing Director, TeleTracking Limited.
The control center supports a management structure that includes a Managing Director for each Trust, supported by a director team, responsible for handling out-of-hours bed pressures and decision-making regarding escalation beds, for example. TeleTracking’s mobile application makes it possible for decision-makers to view bed status in real-time from their phones and make data-informed decisions, helping ensure that patients get to the right beds sooner and genuinely contributing to reducing patient wait times at a time when the hospitals are running on minimal staff numbers.
Clare concludes, “Using technology to automate key processes is an important part of our approach to dramatically improving the co-ordination of admissions and discharges from our hospitals. Combined with improved workflows and staff training, this comprehensive approach will make it possible to make the best use of our 1,800 beds―speeding up bed turnaround time due to a real-time view of our bed status and automating requests for porters and bed cleaners. This approach will help create much needed bed capacity and underpins our commitment to the highest quality patient care.”
About TeleTracking Technologies, Inc.
For every hour patients wait for care, they face objectively worse outcomes. TeleTracking believes it is unacceptable that patients are not able to access the care they need, when they need it, due to operating inefficiencies and unnecessary cost barriers. Our mission is simple, to ensure no one waits for the care they need. Named one of Becker's "Great Places to Work" in 2017 and 2018 and a Pittsburgh Business Times “Corporate Citizenship Award” winner, TeleTracking delivers extraordinary outcomes that have been the subject of study by the RAND Corporation and KLAS Research.
About the Mid and South Essex University Hospitals group
There are three acute Trusts in mid and south Essex serving a local population of 1.2 million people; Mid Essex Hospital Services NHS Trust, Southend University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and Basildon and Thurrock University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. The Mid and South Essex University Hospitals Group are working towards merging to become one of the largest Trusts in the country.
Mid Essex Hospital Services NHS Trust provides a comprehensive range of acute and community-based services to a local population of approximately 371,000. It also provides regional upper gastrointestinal (upper GI) surgical services, a national profile plastics service and regional head and neck services, in addition to a supra regional burns service (St Andrew's centre for plastic surgery and burns). The Trust, based in the heart of Essex, employs over 3,800 staff and provides services from five sites in and around Chelmsford, Maldon, Braintree and Witham. However, the Trust’s estate has changed significantly with the opening of a new hospital wing
Southend University Hospital provides healthcare for around 330,000 people through a comprehensive range of acute services found at the main Prittlewell Chase site and at outlying satellite clinics across the region. Our hospital is the South Essex surgical centre for uro-oncology and gynae-oncology surgery and is a centre of excellence for the care of stroke. We provide a comprehensive range of acute services including: acute medical and surgical specialities: general medicine; general surgery; orthopaedics; ear, nose and throat; ophthalmology; cancer treatment; renal dialysis; obstetrics & gynaecology, and children's services.
Basildon and Thurrock University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust primarily provides services for 405,000 people living in south-west Essex covering Basildon and Thurrock, together with parts of Brentwood and Castle Point. We provide an extensive range of acute healthcare services at Basildon and Orsett Hospitals, plus x-ray and blood testing facilities at the St Andrew's Centre in Billericay. We also provide dermatology services across the whole of south Essex. With a budget of more than £288million, last year the Trust treated 77,500 inpatients and day patients, provided nearly 300,000 outpatient appointments and attended to 103,000 patients in accident and emergency.
Attachments