In June we began a soft go live of a system called OPTICA to support our patients who require support with recovery and packages of care etc. after discharge from one of our hospital sites.

The system, which has replaced our existing in-house developed system called TOC (transfer of care) is now fully live.

Director of Operations, Michael Folan, said: "As we move to using the new system, some of the language we use to describing discharge challenges and opportunities will change. We will move away from talking about numbers of patients on the Transfer of Care system (TOC numbers), to a focus on the opportunities we have to support timely discharge of patients without a Criteria to Reside, across Pathways 0, 1, 2 and 3.

"Each of those pathways equate to the level of care a patient needs upon discharge. 0 being no new care needs, 1 being new care in their own home, 2 being short stay bed needs and 3 being 24/7 nursing, residential and/or specialist care home needs.

"What's fantastic is that the OPTICA system allows us to see the whole patient pathway both in and outside of hospital, linking us with our system partners and having clear and up to date information about a patient’s progress along those discharge pathways. This will help support key streams of work, such as our internal Well Organised Ward transformation and some of our community pathway transformation work across Calderdale and Kirklees.

"I'll share my thanks with colleagues in advance as their support in the use of OPTICA will be key to timely discharge and optimising the outcomes for our patients across all the pathways.

"I also want to give a huge thank you to the discharge co-ordinator teams who have, over the last four months, run the two systems in parallel, while we worked through some technical issues. They also supported training of wider teams in the use of OPTICA. That training will continue with teams as we embed its use across teams both internally and externally."