Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Implements Nervecentre Hospital at Night

Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has extended its implementation of Nervecentre to deliver the benefits of mobile working, workflow and governance across Blackpool Victoria Hospital. The extension includes: hospital-wide management of the Acute Response Team (out-of-hours working); hospital-wide Mobile Handover; management of patient referrals to 90+ specialties.

Prior to this most recent contract, Nervecentre was implemented as a six-month trial for Acute Response Team management across medical wards and implemented in full across all wards for management of portering requests.

Dr Victoria Ellarby, vision programme director said: "Our initial implementations of Nervecentre has proven to be very successful and we are excited about extending our relationship with Nervecentre.

"Our Acute Response Team and Portering services have demonstrated improved responsiveness, we have additional levels of audit and governance and mobile working has increased staff efficiency. By extending the use of Nervecentre to standardise other clinical and operational processes and to provide real-time visibility of the hospital's activities, we believe that we will provide a safer, higher quality, more consistent service for our patients.

"The project will have a direct impact on two of our key strategic aims – zero delays and zero harm."

The Acute Response Team at Blackpool Victoria Hospital provides out-of-hours cover across the site.

Andrew Goacher, clinical change facilitator, commented on the trial implementation of Nervecentre: "During out-of-hours periods before Nervecentre, wards would request attention for a patient from the Acute Response Team using a pager and landline system.

"Allocation of tasks was managed manually; junior doctors maintained their own paper-based list; requests for attention could get delayed and passed between shifts, or even missed altogether. By maintaining a central list of outstanding tasks, allocating those tasks to the junior doctor's mobile device and driving accountability, Nervecentre provides a full list of which patient has an outstanding need, and who has accepted responsibility for that particular task.

"By giving our team the appropriate tools we have driven down response times, reduced the potential for untoward incidents and are able to ensure that incomplete tasks are appropriately escalated."

The next phase of implementation is Mobile Handover, which provides each member of the clinical team with a real-time view of their patients.

In addition to removing the risk and inefficiency of paper based handover meetings, Mobile Handover ensures that all members of a clinical team are working from a common understanding of the status of a patient.

Debbie Guy, director of clinical operations at Nervecentre explained: "A significant risk to patient safety in most hospitals is the reliance that each member of the clinical team places on their own paper-based notes that are generally only updated at the start of a shift. By enabling nurses and doctors to update patient information on their mobile device, Blackpool will be able to utilise a consistent and up-to-date view of the status of each patient across the hospital. Better information ensures better patient care and smoother operation of the hospital."

Russell Millner, divisional director for scheduled care, said: "We recognised Nervecentre as an enabling platform with the potential to improve a number of our business and clinical processes. Our initial investment allowed us to support and transform the trust's portering service, introduce Nervecentre to our clinical staff and prove the benefits of automating workforce management.

"The pilot implementation with the Acute Response Team proved that those benefits could be extended to clinical processes. Mobile Handover extends that service transformation to a much wider base of clinical users with exciting potential for improvements in patient care."

Paul Volkaerts, managing director of Nervecentre , believes that Blackpool's decision is a strong endorsement of how Nervecentre's mobile health applications can transform hospital processes.

He said: "We welcome Blackpool Teaching Hospitals to the growing number of Nervecentre customers and look forward to extending our relationship with them. Increasingly we are seeing NHS Trusts embracing mobile technology as they recognise the positive impact it can have on the safety and efficiency of hospitals.

"The breadth of services being introduced at Blackpool demonstrates the flexibility of Nervecentre, the importance of tight integration between task management, handover and observations and reinforces our vision of a whole hospital solution for reducing delays and improving clinical governance.

"We are delighted with Blackpool's decision to work with us and look forward to building a showcase customer in the region."

About Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust provides Acute and Community Health Services across Blackpool, Fylde, Wyre and North Lancashire.

Blackpool Victoria Hospital treats more than 105,000 day-case and inpatients and more than 325,000 outpatients every year. Its A&E department is one of the busiest in the country with more than 80,000 attendances per year. The Trust has more than 6,500 staff and 811 beds.

About Nervecentre
Nervecentre is a healthcare focused consultancy and software development organisation founded in 2010 which is committed to enabling the NHS to improve productivity and quality through innovative, mobile collaboration technology.

Nervecentre addresses patient safety, clinical governance and resource management through a series of MobileTask Management, Handover and Observations applications. Its solutions are platform independent and integrate into a hospital’s existing IT and PAS systems.

Its handset independent applications function with multiple mobile devices A comparable example of the use of Nervecentre for the management of Out-of-Hours working is referenced in the QIPP collection on NICE Evidence. This shows how NHS staff are saving money without compromising on quality. QIPP reference 12/0017 published by Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust.

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