The Real Benefits of Healthtech - Releasing Time to Care

In its winter flow report 2017-18, the Royal College of Emergency Medicine said it was: "the worst winter we’ve ever experienced." And hospital bosses are predicting the same again - one well regarded figure was quoted at the HSJ Annual Summit as saying, 'We've lost this winter already.'

The upshot of the severity of the crisis is that there has been some much-needed debate - and a new funding settlement for the NHS - to tackle the long-term sustainability of the health and social care system.

However, the new fundingcommitment and subsequent 10-year NHS plan,needs to be considered in parallel with making the best use of the resources that are already available. And we know that there is technology available that could help to resolve many of the current issues facing staff in the NHS. If such technology was deployed effectively, it could, for example, increase staff efficiency and release additional time for healthcare professionals to care for their patients.

Matt Hancock's recently published ‘Vision for Digital, Data and Technology in Health and Social Care' makes great strides in encouraging the NHS to use mainstream products and services by addressing barriers such as interoperability, privacy, security, and digital inclusion. However, it doesn't tackle the fact that there is fully interoperable, secure and user-intuitive technology readily available and can assist with service pressures, that is not being adopted.

Giving trust boards the evidence

There is no doubt that CIOs and CCIOs are working hard to ensure that technology is on trust board agendas.Yet some trusts still lack an executive team to tell them about the latest developments. And even well-informed boards will naturally look for evidence of return on investment, which, as Bob Wachter made clear in his Review of Technology in the NHS, isn't always readily available.

We want every board to have the evidence to make informed decisions. It's why we have undertaken an in-depth piece of benefits realisation work to help trusts understand how the implementation of the MAXIMS EPR can benefitcritical areas. The analysis undertaken was carried out independently by Inform Health Associates, using the EPR benefits and cost analysis model, which is used by many acute trusts in the UK.

Crucially, it doesn't justfocus on cash releasing benefits. Traditionally, IT suppliers have informed trusts on the benefits of implementing a system in the context of operational efficiencies which lead to releasing cash; however,this doesn't address the productivity challenge manytrusts are faced with now, every day.

Benefits include time, not just money

The foundation of the benefits realisation analysis was a ‘typical’ district general hospital, with 600 beds, a turnover of £250 million a year, and 3,700 members of staff. It assumed a six to 18-month deployment period for an electronic patient record and calculated the time and financial savings that could be achieved over a ten-year contract.

What we found is that the hospital could release the equivalent of 44 additional beds every day, by improving capacity in urgent and emergency care and by the bedsidein wards. Also, that it could secure the equivalent of an additional 48 staff by reducing the amount of time spent on paper handling, administration and clinical handover across the hospital.

In cash terms, the total resources and efficiencies saved adds up to just over £104 million over the ten-year period. To reiterate, though, I don’t think the money is the primary argument. When the NHS is under such enormous pressure, the business case is the benefits in terms of bed capacity, and the time healthcare professionals have with their patients.

Technology supports patient flow

The bedside care figures are a result of using modern, mobile systems to improve patient pathway management, which helps to reduce the incidence of, for example, pressure ulcers and allergic reactions,and to alert staff to patients with early signs of acute kidney injury.

The impact that technology can have on patient pathway management is clear; if a bed becomes available, then bed managers will know as soon as that happens, instead of at the end of the day, or when a bed census is run.

This directly addresses the challenges with patient flow raised in those recent reports on A&E and provider performance.

Efficiency and safety work together

Clinicians always want to deliver the safest possible care for their patients. Managers want to do the same. Yet clinical safety can sometimes be a 'hard-sell' to a hard-pressed board because it's normally about things that don’t happen. For example, the pressure sore that doesn’t develop and lengthen a hospital stay or the AKI that is spotted and treated quickly before the patient deteriorates.

What our benefits realisation analysis shows is that the technology that helps to deliver clinical safety - by recording observations and calculating risk scores - also reduces the time needed to do this work, and enables it to be done by fewer people.

The data isa great example of how technology can reduce the amount of time needed to carry out routine but vital tasks, and upskill staff so that the most highly trained clinicians in a hospital can be used where their experience is most valuable.

We have the business case; just do IT

That includes removing paper from the system, reducing the amount of time that clinicians spend looking for information, and cutting down the time nurses spend on handover and administration.One hospital we work with has saved £1 million just by not having to deliver notes to outpatient clinics. Likewise, our analysis shows that nurses can halve the time of their daily shift handovers by moving away from paper-based processes.

The benefits realisation project has been a major piece of work that demonstrates beyond doubt how the NHS can use technology, now, to help relieve the pressure it is under by releasing time to care.

Forty-fiveextra beds, 48extra staff every day; imagine what the typical district general hospital can do with that during the winter.