tional records are associated with patient moves and
patients visiting the hospital more than once over the
period of the trial.
A total of forty seven (47) patient moves were
recorded, which underestimates the number of patient
moves that occurred by about 50%. This was chiefly
because patients allocated beds in the trial ward were
often admitted to a different ward initially and then
moved to the trial ward. This allocation of patients to
alternative wards, was often due to the trial ward op-
erating at capacity but also being the optimum ward
for the patient type, an orthopaedic patient. A patient
would be admitted pending surgery and a bed would
be available in the trial ward on surgery completion.
Patient moves were also missed due to the author
adopting the “bed manager” data entry role. On occa-
sion, the first indication of a move would be due to the
release of a bed through the bed renewal process, and
the released patient appearing in a different bed. This
necessitated the patient being readmitted. This sce-
nario would be negated by the bed manager operating
the system.
A total of sixty nine (69) patients were “Ear-
marked”, that is assigned to a bed that was either al-
ready occupied but pending an imminent discharge,
or the bed was “Out of Service” pending cleaning.
Subsequently releasing the bed for the existing patient
and/or completing the renewal of the bed, allowed the
“Earmarked” patient to automatically take on the sta-
tus of “Allocated Pending” and then followed the nor-
mal status cycles presenting at admission.
The trial was arranged on the understanding that
bed stripping and redressing were implemented by
the HCA role. In practice, both Nurses and Student
Nurses contributed significantly to bed stripping and
redressing. QR codes, for the HCA role to allow scan-
ning for completion of the bed dressing, were pro-
vided to the Nursing staff on the ward once this was
highlighted, but uptake was negligible.
One particular area of concern was the variable
approach to completing scanning. Housekeeping
compliance was very high initially but changed fol-
lowing the stopping and recommencing of the trial to
harden the server. This was addressed by retraining
sessions and highlighting the continuation of the trial.
This restored the high compliance by Housekeeping.
The HCA contribution was more difficult to cor-
rect due to Nursing staff and students making the
beds. Additionally, low staffing level on some days
hampered compliance. The Ward Clerk was trained
on the use of the system and tasked with engaging the
HCAs and Nursing staff, but this was not a notable
success. An effort to deploy a screen on the ward, that
would provide feedback to both HCAs and House-
keeping on their contribution, was implemented but
ultimately was not completed by the end of the trial
due to staffing issues in the IT Department.
In terms of the objectives, the detail that could
be gathered proved successful. Patient bed release
was seen to highlight beds requiring renewal, before
Housekeeping and HCAs were apprised of this ver-
bally by the Nursing staff. Additionally, the lack of
availability of beds prior to patient admission was
shown to reflect the true situation, providing Admis-
sions with an accurate view of the situation on the
Ward. Both these improvements in the flow of in-
formation contribute significantly to a positive patient
experience.
Accurate timing of patient movements was not
fully achieved in the trial, as it was hampered by lack
of Bed Manager engagement, issues with HCA scan-
ning, and the limitation of having a single ward as
the focus of the trial missing patient transfers. How-
ever, for patients being admitted to the ward, status
change from “Allocated On Site” to “Occupied” could
be used to provide a mechanism to trigger patient
preparation for their procedures by the Clinical staff
both on an “is present” and “known location” basis.
Both occupied and unoccupied times are useful
metrics, which provide a breakdown on bed effi-
ciency. The unoccupied time is broken down further
in terms of beds being unoccupied due to being “va-
cant” or “out of service”. This allows focus on the bed
usage and is a broker for discussion on how efficiency
can be improved.
6 RESULTS
In the existing system it is difficult to quantify the ac-
curacy of timestamps, for events. Events entered on
the HIS will be available to other users of the sys-
tem, once entered, but there may be a delay between
an event occurring and being entered. Information on
some events are held locally and timestamp informa-
tion is not necessarily recorded.
In comparison, the new systems automatically
records events and timestamps, once tasks have been
completed and scanned. The information is then
available to all system users. The new system cap-
tures additional events and their timestamps.
Table 2 lists the data capture comparison for the
existing system and the new system.
It is difficult to define times for events to be
recorded, for the existing system. Not all events
recorded by the existing system have recorded times-
tamps. Generally, the existing system can be regarded
as best effort and only events recorded on the HIS can
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