Real Time Hospital Allows UK Hospitals to Keep Patients Safe, Staffing up to the Minute

SMART, a supplier of workforce management solutions to the National Health Service (NHS), announced today that Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust and Sandwell & West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust will use its Real Time Hospital decision support solution to provide real-time patient care and deployment of staff, according to a press release.

Another NHS Trust, Grampian, is currently piloting Real Time Hospital along with its e-rostering pilot. Together, e-rostering and Real Time Hospital “will provide managers with a comprehensive planning tool and a real time management information in graphical format to instantly highlight staff and patient situations on wards,” according to the press release.

Real Time Hospital has been “designed to provide up-to-the-minute information to ward managers, matrons and executive management to support evidence- based decision-making.” Real time information can help hospitals avoid “issues with staffing levels, skills mix, nurse/patient acuity ratios, permanent/agency staff ratios and unplanned absence,” according to the healthtechwire story. The best part of the new solution is that managers can now take immediate corrective action, making sure that all patients stay safe at all times.

“In a busy hospital the process of collating information regarding ward staffing levels and patient details in order to make effective operational decisions can be extremely time- consuming,” said Neil Buchanan, efficiency and productivity programme manager for NHS Grampian, in the press release. “Indeed, the laborious nature of this process can result in the gathered data being insufficiently current to act upon effectively.” 

“As the whole of the NHS wrestles with the challenge of maintaining and improving patient care in the face of budget reductions, Real Time Hospital helps to ensure that staff levels, skills mix and acuity levels are not compromised,” said Nick Whiteley, managing director, Health Division at SMART, in the press release. “Avoiding patient safety incidents can save hospitals and trusts huge amounts of resource, not to mention the benefits to the patients and their families. . .By harnessing technology for workforce management, not only can NHS Trusts optimise the use of staff, they release many hours of skilled personnel back to patient care, supporting Prime Minister David Cameron’s stated aim for nurses to focus on ‘patients not paperwork.’”