Bed management software may reduce cancelled ops

North Cheshire Hospitals NHS Trust has implemented a bed management system in order to reach their target of reducing cancelled operations by 5%.

The ExtraMed Beds system is web-based, and the information can be accessed anywhere from the hospital. The trust is hoping that the ability to plan ahead for patients who need to be hospitalised for operations will lead to a reduction in cancellations and delayed admissions.

Patrick Kelly, managing director of ExtraMed, told E-Health Insider that the system, which was implemented at the beginning of the month, allowed staff to choose which information to record about their patients, including required information such as gender, name and condition, and also operation date and expected date of discharge.

"It’s an updated real-time display with all the beds in the hospital – who’s allocated to them, significant information about the care about the patient and when the bed will become available," said Kelly.

Although adding data to the system is not automatic, staff need only ‘drag and drop’ to add patients to the database. "What we do to make that manual input effective, is we make it tremendously easy," added Kelly. Discharge reports can be printed off from the system, which encourages staff to make use of it.

Another benefit of the system, added Kelly, is that patients are more likely to be allocated to the correct ward. "Often we found that if patients aren’t allocated to the right ward they stayed for longer," added Kelly. The software can also assist in helping visiting relatives locate their loved ones, point out any patients overdue for discharge, and may also be used to flag MRSA cases.

Kelly said that the implementation by ExtraMed was the second in the country; the first was located in Bedford. He predicted that bed management software systems would probably become more popular as trusts came to realise that such functionality was not going to be provided by the National Programme for IT.

Irene Melia, emergency care lead at North Cheshire Hospitals NHS Trust, said that the system would "give us the detail we require to function efficiently at an operational level, and will also be a strategic element of our Bed Management infrastructure."

The system and training has been in place for a couple of weeks already, and the trust is currently preparing an interim report into its effectiveness.