TeleTracking Technologies, specialists in patient flow, capacity management and health system command centre technology, is expanding its footprint within the National Health Service (NHS), supporting NHS trusts with bed management, capacity management and patient flow software to address the backlog of elective procedures built up during the COVID-19 pandemic.
For over three decades, TeleTracking has worked with hospitals and health systems across the UK, United States and Canada to deliver its hospital capacity management and patient flow technology. The TeleTracking platform provides real time transparency across all care settings and provides actionable and meaningful data to staff for better, faster, and safer decisions around patient care transitions, bed management and resource planning.
Now more than ever, the ability to coordinate day-to-day activities and respond to the dynamic needs of patients, staff and the community is critical in delivering the most efficient and effective care. Many NHS Trusts still rely on manual approaches to capacity and bed management that involves clinical staff making multiple phone calls; frequent meetings; multiple spreadsheets, and physically running from ward to ward to check on bed status before a patient can be assigned. The same type of sequence occurs during the discharge process with phone calls to request bed cleaning and portering services, leaving beds lying empty – or ‘idle’ – for up to six hours. The implications of poor bed management extend to A&E delays; cancellations of elective surgery; delayed discharge; poor infection control and increased mortality; incorrect clinical pathways and extended issues around care in the community; and staff stress and burnout.
Neil Griffiths, managing director, TeleTracking UK, comments: “As care delivery and capacity management becomes more complex, finding ways to coordinate patient care across care settings is one of the most important challenges facing the NHS. Since our foundation in 1991, we continue to learn from our work with over 1,100 hospitals, 40 of which are in the UK, on how to add efficiencies to every element of the patient flow process for improved patient care and workforce support.”
TeleTracking’s capacity and bed management solutions automate manual processes and bring real-time visibility to beds, patients and resources within and across a Trust. Designed around the specific day-to-day needs of healthcare professionals, TeleTracking provides real-time visibility to over 4,000 acute care beds in the UK with predictive data and analytics for bed and capacity planning. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, UK Trusts leveraged TeleTracking’s solutions to maintain best practices: tracking numbers and the location of COVID-patients; predicting the amount of PPE required; and supporting overall infection control and isolation statuses for both staff and patient safety.
Neil Griffiths concludes: “As demand for NHS services increases to address the backlog of care caused by COVID-19, both frontline staff and patients deserve a better way to manage beds and resources. Intuitive, scalable and data-backed solutions will transform patient flow and return time to caregivers to focus on their priority – caring for their patients.”
