Following Alcidion’s acquisition of ExtraMed in April 2021, Queen’s Hospital Burton is to deploy the ExtraMed Inpatient Flow Manager (IPFM) to help busy clinicians more efficiently manage patient flow, avoid delays in discharge, enhance patient care and free up crucial capacity for more patients. Healthcare professionals at Queen’s Hospital Burton will be better placed to get patients home safely and as early as possible, while freeing up urgently needed capacity.
From the successful implementation of IPFM at Royal Derby Hospital, where staff have reduced lengths of stay and enhanced care for patients, University Hospitals of Derby and Burton NHS Foundation Trust (UHDB) will rollout the same system across its Burton site. The system will provide instant visibility of patients’ status to staff on wards and working hospital wide as well as to senior leaders, replacing manual whiteboards and processes with an intuitive digital solution that improves patient experience and helps staff make safer informed decisions.
Gill Ogden, Director of Nursing at the Trust, said: “Staff are really excited about this technology coming to Burton, where we expect immediate differences for discharge and overall patient flow, with more functionality we will explore over time. Clinical teams at Royal Derby Hospital have really valued having information at a glance and the improved communication that IPFM has supported. Nurses on wards in Burton will too be able to quickly see what is happening with the patient and what needs to happen to prevent delays in patients going home. That’s the right thing for many reasons. We operate a very busy hospital and need to free up space for patients. When patients stay in hospital longer than they need, that isn’t good for them – with older patients experiencing deconditioning. If patients are ready to go home, that is where we should be getting them.”
Clinical staff will draw on the technology to deliver joined-up care; whilst management will have better visibility of bed capacity, the ability to identify bottlenecks and the information available to plan resources more efficiently and effectively.
Gill Ogden added: “Beyond staff on individual wards, bed managers can quickly identify available beds. As a senior nurse, if I do a ward walk, I will look at IPFM to see which patients have a longer length of stay and ask colleagues about those patients, so I can understand why delays are happening – whether that’s because hospital is the right place for a complex patient, or if there are delays that we can do something about”.
Gill Ogden, Director of Nursing at Burton NHS Foundation Trust
“Teams like pharmacy and physiotherapy that work across wards can see where their patients are with ease. The discharge team can see which patients are medically fit for discharge and make necessary arrangements both in the hospital and for more complex discharges, with social services, for example. This is about making sure everything is done to get patients home safely. This will help us to reduce delays and lengths of stay. Patients on emergency pathways are less likely to wait longer than necessary. We will be able to get more elective patients in for procedures – which given the national elective backlog, is more important than ever.”
Queen’s Hospital Burton has been part of UHDB since 2018, one of the largest NHS trusts serving a population of more than one million across Derbyshire and Staffordshire. It employs 13,000 staff and provides clinical services in 48 specialties via two acute and three community hospitals.
Susan Say, managing director of ExtraMed, an Alcidion Group company, said: “Healthcare professionals in Derby have been visionary in their thinking. They have made IPFM a success from the beginning, going from strength to strength. We have worked closely with the trust to support its vision to have a technically advanced environment and build on its achievements to support improved patient care. We look forward to seeing the benefits transferred to staff and patients at Burton”.
Alcidion’s Patientrack solution is already used across UDHB and clinicians at Royal Derby Hospital started using ExtraMed’s IPFM in 2013. The system was extended to GPs, social care and community nursing in 2017. It is expected to be deployed at Queen’s Hospital Burton in early 2022.
Alcidion’s Managing Director, Kate Quirke, said “We are pleased to see this validation of the benefits that can be realised through the adoption of patient flow solutions. The finalisation of this agreement after our acquisition of ExtraMed confirms our belief in the value that can be delivered to our customers from having access to these types of solutions”.