As winter pressures continue to grip us now the time to tell you of a new drive at CHFT to improve patient flow.

Every day in our Trust we have around 300 patients who have been with us for more than 10 days. Many of them should be in a different bed or in a different setting if they are to be receiving the care which is best for them and their families.

This is the focus of the new Safer Patient Flow Programme.

For the past five weeks this programme  has been underway helping us to bring together multiple issues such as:  reducing admissions, reducing length of stay, ensuring we have safer staffing levels, reducing clinical incidents and improving both patients’ and colleagues’ satisfaction.

So how does it work?

Every morning starts with a roving multi-disciplinary (MDT) walk-round made up of CHFT colleagues, GPs and colleagues in community and social services. They kick-start the day with ward visits and each visit starts with an assessment – with senior nurses on the wards – of the white boards. Together, each patient is assessed to look at their pathway and their progression towards discharge.

Where delays are highlighted, work can be immediately actioned to start or speed up the process and the hope is it will become more embedded in the way we work.

Our Head of Unplanned Care, Jan Potts, said:  “Some colleagues can think “flow” is a really challenging word as it involves moving patients into different settings. But, at the heart of it, what we are working together to do is to get our patients into the right bed and being cared for by the right teams of nurses, therapists and doctors. That is the best for them.”

Jan is heading up the project with our Senior Improvement Lead, Colin Duffield. He said the drive was to get our beds back into their proper usage and pointed out we currently have medical patients in surgical beds, some medical patients in the wrong medical speciality beds. This isn’t a good thing for the patients or indeed the whole running of the hospital.

Colin said: “We need to look at ways – working with colleagues – we can change or improve the way we work to guarantee the best for patients both arriving with us and leaving us.”

So far, some of areas which have come to light are:

• where busy colleagues “assume” something has been done but haven’t had opportunity to check. Necessary actions often get missed in amongst the daily routine.
• Potentail improvements to  multi-disciplinary working to ensure all the people concerned in the patients journey are clear about plans

Areas such as 5b at CRH have already shown outstanding improvements to build on. On April 11 there will be a workshop to further spread the messages about the programme.