Seven NHS trusts in London have adopted modules from the Analytical Command Centre at University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust (UHMBT). The command centre is a series of screens based at the Royal Lancaster Infirmary site which shows live information about a patient before they enter the Trust’s hospitals, during their stay and when they are discharged home.
The London trusts have adopted two modules from the command centre:
- ambulance messaging which alerts staff to how many ambulances are predicted, details of patient type and visibility of incoming COVID-19 risks
- bed management messaging which gives staff access to the bed status across each ward on every site on any device and flags where patients have COVID-19.
The Trust developed the command centre with QlickiT, a Catalyst Company, so it would fit with any NHS patient systems.
Rob O’Neill, Head of Information, UHMBT, said: “This safe and effective model is testament to the hard work of my team and our partners QlickiT. We’re delighted that other trusts in the country have adopted the command centre model to help them with the flow of patients in and out of their organisations during COVID-19 and beyond.”
Mike Cawthorn, Director and Business Solution Lead at Catalyst BI, said: “We are proud to be supporting our NHS Trusts with the rapid deployment of the command centre in response to the COVID-19 crisis. Rob and his team have developed a world-class product at UHMBT and QlickiT worked with the team to add a configuration capability, which allows the command centre to be deployed within days to any NHS organisation in the UK and further afield. This combination allows the London trusts to deploy the modules developed by UHMBT within hours.”
The command centre is part of a different set of activities that have been implemented in the emergency setting at UHMBT to help staff to improve patient management, care and experience.
Other benefits of the command centre include:
- Showing which patients are due for discharge and themes of why there may be delays
- Highlighting the performance in the Emergency Departments (ED) which allows staff to see the number of walk-ins and if there has been a surge in patients
- Showing the number of admissions to hospital through outpatient appointments and departments such as the Ambulatory Care Unit.
The Trust holds patient flow meetings every two hours in the command centre which helps teams to better analyse the emergency care setting and patient flow in and out of the hospital.
The command centre has been designed to work in a similar way to airport Air Traffic Control and displays live and predictive information about patients throughout their hospital stay, from incoming patients travelling via ambulance to patients waiting for discharge home.
The command centre was awarded the ‘Delivering for Front Line Staff’ award at the Health Tech Newspaper awards earlier this year.
You can find out more about QlickiT at https://qlickit.co.uk/