St. Vincent’s University Hospital Case Study
Our patient flow and bed management software has given the frontline team at St. Vincent’s University Hospital, Dublin, a digital way of managing beds - enabling the admission, transfer and discharge of its patients and a better, safer experience.
Names, conditions, location, infection risk, status, treatment protocols – critical information that Flow from us has been brought together for better Digital Care in a single-bed management system at St. Vincent’s University Hospital, (SVUH), Dublin.
Introduction
Keeping the flow of patients moving through hospitals has a significant impact on the safe and efficient performance of health and social care settings.
Before working with us, SVUH was reliant on paper for bed management. Written reports were collated and gathered from daily visits and phone calls to the wards by bed management staff, but were held by an admin team that was open during office hours only.
The Patient Administration System (PAS) the hospital used couldn’t show real-time bed occupancy data. The hospital and its clinical team, therefore, opted for total digital transformation. SVUH’s Medical Exec ICT (MEICT) Committee produced a business case, and, after an Official Journal of the EU (OJEU) tender, our patient bed management solution, Flow, was selected.
How we helped
Flow has replaced the paper trail and brought the patient and clinician closer together to deliver improved Digital Care by displaying live bed statuses for all patients and wards via an interactive whiteboard. Reliance on 30 flip paper wall charts has been replaced with a complete view, on one digital screen.
Staff can collaboratively view and update information on transfers, admissions, waiting times, pre-admissions, bed vacancies and expected length of Stay (ELOS) for each patient. Flow has been integrated with the hospital’s Emergency Department (ED) and PAS, and as a result, patients have a smoother, less stressful transition to an inpatient ward.
Crucially, Flow is helping the hospital to anticipate activity, which means resilience planning is improved. Bed managers and clinicians are forecasting bed status with more accurate data, and planning more effectively.
They are approving ward transfer requests and raising emergency bed requests directly through Flow in real-time, saving huge amounts of resources and stressful waiting times for patients. Inpatients can be searched in Flow to giving their exact location, their journey around the hospital, and a complete set of online real-time notes, making communication with visitors, relatives and other care pathways significantly easier.
Their Flow system and its interfacing with other systems, like ED, has given back invaluable time to both nursing on the wards, and the bed management team
The result
- Flow has meant that there is now a zero-paper process for bed management at St. Vincent’s. The entire bed management process is digital and touch-screen interactive whiteboards show all the information, under a series of icons, to all clinicians and staff
- Flow enables clinicians, nurses and bed management teams to better monitor the Predicted Discharge Dates, the recording of which has reached an unprecedented rate of 98% of wards (2017 figures)
- Significant improvements have been noted to the Patient Experience Time (PET), compliance with HSE, and special delivery unit targets for patience on trolleys in ED
- Patient information is now permanently recorded in Flow and is, therefore, quality-assured, ensuring higher levels of data management compliance
Inspiring others
Our Flow solution for SVUH has not only facilitated bed management communication within their team, but also regionally, across the Ireland East Hospital Group, and on a national level, providing a go-to standard for the provision of Digital Care.
