Nottingham Hospitals improve patient flow through mobile therapies referrals solution

Software designed by Therapists and ICT leads at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust (NUH) and developed by Nervecentre Software is being used by Therapy staff at City Hospital and QMC Nottingham improving patient flow and reducing delays.

Accessed through mobile devices, this Therapies referral solution is now used by ward staff to allocate patient referrals which are then instantly allocated to the most appropriate therapist logged on to the system that day.

Inpatient Occupational Therapists, Physiotherapist and Dietitians, supporting the emergency pathway are currently receiving approx. 2500 referrals a month. This solution now speeds up referral times from logging the initial referral request on a mobile device to accepting the referrals and allocating the workload to relevant staff more effectively. The electronic referrals also provides more comprehensive and detailed patient referral information than previously recorded.

The NUH Therapy Service Management Team explain “This is a great asset to the continued ‘digital’ approach the Trust are working towards and a great opportunity to make the patient to therapies referral pathway a more effective and robust task management process for all the hard-working staff involved. This system also enables Therapy Services to report on our Referral to Treatment times which are one of our Key performance indicators, providing feedback to both staff and the Divisional Leadership Team”.

Greg Stretton, Physio Team Leader at NUH said “Nervecentre has made me and my team much more efficient. Referrals are picked up instantly, negating the need for an inconvenient bleep system. Emails are checked throughout the day, often on the “fly”, so in spending less time sat at a PC and more time on the wards”.

The initial development project involved Therapies staff and ICT staff working with Nervecentre to develop robust pathways for the electronic referral system as an extension to the hospitals existing mobile healthcare solution which already provides the 4500 clinical staff with access to patient safety focused applications such as electronic observations, clinical noting and handover.