The Patient Flow Team have access to improved and streamlined information to help them manage patient flow thanks to a new collaborative tool designed by the THIS Development Team, led by Julian Bates.

 Head of Corporate Information, Gawaine Carter, said, ‘We like to pride ourselves on responsiveness to the organisation. When the guys from the SAFER Patient Flow Programme first approached us about this we were really happy to sit down with them and design something that helped safe management of patients’.

The tool is a part of the Knowledge Portal (KP) on the intranet and gives live information about how many patients are arriving at hospital, where they are, and who may be experiencing delays in pathways. It also gives live information about ED performance and planned discharges, allowing capacity to be maximised and actions taken to ease bottlenecks before the situation can develop.

 Service Improvement Lead, Colin Duffield, said: "At CHFT we talk about putting the patient first and this is an example of where we’ve used Informatics and the other services to directly help in better patient flow through the hospital. One of the basic truths of the SAFER Patient Flow Programme is that ‘effective flow is safer flow’."

Pictured are Wendi Slack (Clinical Commanders Manager) and Gillian Stoker (Patient Flow Facilitator) using the KP in the Patient Flow Office.

If you are interested in having access to this part of the Knowledge Portal please contact Colin Duffield.