Patients admitted to Countess of Chester Hospital are now being tagged to monitor when beds become free

The Countess of Chester Hospital has installed 4,000 sensors throughout the site to create a “real-time picture of the entire hospital.”

The new system aims to reduce the time people spend in hospital by improving bed management and giving staff more time to care for patients.

Patients, staff and equipment are being tagged to give location data which is sent to a Co-ordination Centre, the hospital says it acts like an ‘air traffic control room” where decisions can be made in patients’ best interests and to “reduce waiting times where possible using the real-time data.”

Equipment is tagged while staff and patients wear badges and electronic wristbands.

Chief Executive Tony Chambers said the move will make the hospital more responsive, “giving our nurses and doctors more time to spend with patients by reducing the administrative and housekeeping tasks they currently have to do.”

Where in the past a series of phone calls might have been needed to source a piece of equipment or get an update on a patient having a scan or procedure, the Co-ordination Centre can provide this information at a glance, helping more patients get to the right bed, to be seen by the right specialists, first time.”

The Countess of Chester Hospital one of the first to use it in the UK, “It’s still early in the process for us and it might take time to see the full benefits but I’m very proud of our team for being brave enough to take this on. I know others will soon follow our lead and it represents a significant investment in our future success as a hospital.” Mr Chambers said.

Initial findings at the Countess…

• Time from a patient being discharged to their hospital bed being ready for a new patient – under 2.5 hours. This is down from around four hours before the Co-ordination Centre Programme
• Bed Turnaround Team – clean an average of 323 beds a week, which is 60 per cent of all ward beds cleaned, releasing an average of 156 hours a week back to nursing staff
• Porters – An average of 700 porter requests are logged daily, with over 180,000 being completed since this part of the system was first introduced in March

The award-winning system being installed at the Countess has been created by TeleTracking Technologies and it is being used to manage 50 per cent of all acute hospital beds in North America and at Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust in the UK, bosses say there is “clear evidence it makes a positive and significant difference to patient flow.”