North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust improves theatre utilisation
Trisoft’s TheatreMan – theatre management software – is assisting North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust to achieve efficiencies in theatre scheduling and utilisation.
The Trust implemented Trisoft’s TheatreMan software some five years ago. Following the appointment of a dedicated System Manager, they now actively use data captured by the system to improve performance, utilisation and planning within theatres, populating TheatreMan – in real time as patients progress through theatre – is part of the daily routine for theatre staff.
Steven Blundell – Systems & Information Manager of Anaesthetics – at the Trust comments: "Using the information rich data in TheatreMan we have already made key changes to improve overall theatre utilisation.
To give you an example, – as part of productive theatres – we continually monitor sessions starting late. TheatreMan enables us to analyse data to understand the reasons for late starting lists, such as if a patient wasn’t consented, DNA’s, unfit patients. We can then respond to specific issues individually. Acting on this information from TheatreMan as helped us reduce late starts by 30% trust-wide in the last six months.
The data within TheatreMan is not only accessible to theatre staff and system managers it is also available to ward staff. This transparency allows theatre receptionists to focus on their administration duties and ward staff to respond proactively to patient relatives regarding the patient’s progress in theatre. Ward staff can also plan for the return of the patient as data within TheatreMan is linked to that in our Bed Management System to provide a real time status screen. By implementing this system and carrying out a Rapid Improvement Workshop we have increased the number of patients who return from recovery to the ward within 15 minutes of informing the ward. This improves the flow of patients through recovery where we previously had issues with bottlenecks at peak periods."
Steven continues: "A vast amount of progress has been made to date, but we know there is more data within TheatreMan we can use to drive further efficiencies. We are currently implementing a Patient Level Information and Costing System and by using data from TheatreMan we are able to provide a full cost of the Theatre Episode, allowing for variation in practice to be reviewed. We look forward to using average surgical timings functionality in the future to ensure that our list utilisation is maximised and effective scheduling achieved."
For more details, visit our TheatreMan information page or contact Nasir Hyder, Christian Hatton or Jimmy Smith on 01246 236450 or by email info@trisoft.co.uk