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17th April, 2012
RealTime Health is introducing a nursing observation module to its RealTime Patient Flow solution – RealTime NursingObs – which enables nursing staff to capture and escalate observation data and so optimise clinical care, especially for high risk patients.
Replacing the manual recording of patient observations, and its inherent potential for error, loss of data and reaction delays, the RealTIme NursingObs solution allows nursing staff to capture observations at the bedside, using an iPad, tablet or other mobile device. Nurses are prompted to undertake observations according to the protocol specified for each patient and data is instantly updated on the RealTime Patient Flow system.
MEWS scores are automatically calculated and displayed, triggering an alert, as appropriate, to outreach nurse, doctor-on-call or consultant via email or pager and instantly appearing on RealTime’s ward view tool.
As well as ensuring timely escalation to critical care for high risk patients, RealTime NursingObs captures doctors’ responses, creating an audit trail and facilitating both handover to other clinical teams and hospital transfers.
According to Dr Jess Boyer, Chief Medical Officer at RealTime Health, timely reaction to regular nursing observations has a significant impact on patient outcomes and helps to reduce length of stay (LoS). “RealTime NursingObs represents a significant advancement in hospitals’ ability to improve patient care, quite simply because it enables nursing staff to carry out this routine but critical task more quickly and more accurately, at the bedside, and to share information instantly with colleagues. Not only does this mean that deteriorating patients are appropriately escalated, but that clinical action plans for all patients can be optimised, with resulting patient care, LoS and financial benefits.”
Fully integrated within RealTime’s Patient Flow management system, the nursing observation module offers both value for money compared with stand alone alternatives and, uniquely, delivers access to observations data to all users throughout the patient journey from a single data entry point.
Explains RealTime Chief Technical Officer, Dave Nurse: “Clinical staff are now asking us to design systems that work with their existing smartphones or tablet devices. Our technology enables the seamless adoption of the RealTime NursingObs solution on commonly-used pocket devices, turning them into high performance clinical tools.”
RealTime NursingObs is currently being rolled out in lead NHS Trusts.
19th March, 2012
RealTime Health Ltd has been selected by Frimley Park Hospital NHS Foundation Trust to deploy its patient flow management solution.
RealTime gets hospitals managing their admissions, transfers and discharges in real time whilst focussing clinical and support teams on delivering the optimum package of care for every patient and alleviating the need for tedious data entry tasks.
“With the RealTime system users will have up to date electronic information on admissions, transfers and discharges available throughout the hospital” said Mike McSweeney, Associate Director Informatics at Frimley Park Hospital “This provides the Trust with a step towards the provision of full electronic patient records.”
Combining a unique and proven process change methodology with a real time patient flow software system, the RealTime solution will be delivered on a knowledge transfer basis. RealTime clinical consultants will work with Frimley Park Hospital clinical staff to roll out the system and change methodology, ensuring a collaborative model of working across all elements of the patient journey. The RealTime solution is based on clinical use cases from several decades of work with North American and UK hospitals and has already delivered proven 10-30% reductions in average patient length for stay at other NHS trusts, typically achieving results within one month of implementation.
The web-based RealTime system will synchronise with Frimley Park’s existing clinical and patient administration systems, avoiding any duplicate entry of information, while delivering “at a glance”, team-based admission, treatment and discharge planning and management. It is scheduled to go live in 2012.
Commented Jim Gabriel, CEO of RealTime Health: “Our selection by Frimley Park is further testament to the success that our award-winning RealTime system is delivering, in terms of cost reduction and patient care, to a fast growing number of hospital trusts in the UK, many of whom we are happy to work with on a risk share basis. The reason for this success is simple – it is the only patient flow system available that is based on a repeatable and transferable methodology that is both clinically driven and provides real time information.”
27th February, 2012
Due to our continuing expansion and success in the NHS market place, RealTime Health is now moving to larger premises. We are pleased to announce our new telephone number
03300881757
and respectively our new office location
UNIT 5
Kings Meadow
Ferry Hinksey Road
Oxford
OX2 0DP
You can now reach us on these new contact details!
14th February, 2012
RealTime Health Ltd (RealTime) and Heatherwood and Wexham Park Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (HWPH) have signed contracts for the Trust wide deployment of the RealTime patient flow solution. The risk sharing contract includes terms linking payments to achievement of a minimum 10% sustained reduction in the average patient length of stay (LoS) over a six month period.
“RealTime is the only system in the world designed from scratch to reduce length of stay. This is our focus, pure and simple. And it’s all based on clinical best practice,” commented Jim Gabriel, CEO of RealTime Health. “Generally our customers achieve LoS reduction greatly in excess of 10% within only a few months of going live. We are delighted to be working with HWPH in this way – this is our second risk-share length of stay reduction project in the UK and the performance target that we have committed to is significant. These projects get everybody aligned and working together in the same direction. As suppliers we enjoy having ‘skin in the game’.”
The RealTime Health solution combines unique process change with a real time patient flow software system. RealTime clinical consultants will work with HWPH on a turnkey basis to rollout the process change methodology, which is based upon clinical use cases from several decades of work with North American and UK hospitals, throughout the Trust.
The multiple award winning software system integrates with existing HWPH clinical and administrative systems, avoiding any duplicate entry of information, and provides at a glance real time information to the whole team involved in each patient’s treatment and discharge from the hospital. HWPH will also be deploying the recently released and revolutionary RealTime Emergency Department patient flow module, extending the “at a glance” view of patient flow to the demanding emergency department environment.
A key requirement of the Trust was for a solution which could reduce length of stay as soon as possible. The RealTime solution will be go-live within 12 weeks of project commencement, delivering immediate cost reductions and improvements to patient care.
HWPH joins a rapidly growing number of NHS Trusts which are embracing the RealTime Health patient flow methodology and system, achieving reductions in average length of stay of between 10-30%, improving patient care and making dramatic financial savings. Other recent RealTime deployments include rollouts at North Cumbria University Hospitals NHS Trust and North Middlesex University Hospital NHS Trust.
15th December, 2011
Whitehaven marks the start of a trust-wide rollout of the award-winning RealTime software as part of a process change improvement programme aimed at releasing time to care, reducing length of stay and improving patient experience
went live with RealTime in Whitehaven at the beginning of October 2011, and is now preparing to roll out the system across the Trust.
RealTime is a key component of the NCUH Trust’s “ForWard” improvement programme — a clinically driven programme of performance improvement that is reengineering the processes for managing patient journeys on the wards of the Trust. ForWard aims to improve patient experience, release time to care for staff, and reduce length of stay. ForWard is improving quality of care through remodelled processes that enable clinical best practice targets to be achievable and consistently met by everybody involved in the delivery of care. RealTime reduces length of stay by enabling all aspects of discharge planning to be clinically driven and collaboratively managed across all the services and agencies that are involved in delivering that care. RealTime integrates bi-directionally with existing systems such as the Trust’s Patient Administration System to track, monitor and drive in one place all information in real time that healthcare professionals need to manage patient journeys optimally.
RealTime was switched on first in the Patterdale and Pillar wards in Whitehaven, which as acute surgical and acute medical wards are key to the start of so many patients’ journeys through the hospital. The ForWard programme is moving to a full rollout Trust-wide from 5 December 2011, completing the go-live in Whitehaven before moving on to Carlisle.
Feedback from staff about RealTime has been enthusiastic.
“RealTime is speeding up the process of inpatient assessments and handovers and ensuring this happens much earlier in the patient’s journey,” says Lesley Carruthers, Head of Nursing: “It’s been great, and I take my hat off to the nurses, the trainers, the IT team, and everybody else involved in the rollout. This is a very ambitious change management project and everybody has done such an amazing job. Nursing staff have switched seamlessly from paper to electronic assessments and will extend their interaction with the system through nursing observations and acuity scores, which is going to release significant time to care.”
RealTime increases transparency of relevant information on the patients’ status throughout their journey and facilitates the collaboration between staff in the ward, hospital and community services. RealTime uses real time dashboards that display the current status in terms of discharge planning and care pathway for all patients at a glance. The software also incorporates KPI dashboards that track care quality commission targets and triggers alerts instantaneously, all monitored in real time and visible to all involved in the patient’s care journey.
The benefits that are immediately available through switching on RealTime are numerous. Speeding up inpatient assessments, for example, reduces risk; RealTime makes it possible to track CQC targets in a live environment; alerts such as the risk of falls score or infection status are immediately visible; data quality and timely data entry have been transformed, which has triggered at least one change request to the supplier of the Trust’s PAS; quality of care increases; performance increases; collaborative working methods are far more powerfully supported; increased data quality is leading to better coding which equates immediately to less lost income to the Trust; there are closer links with social services; infection alerting is now automated and immediately visible hospital-wide, triggering alerts in PAS in real time; collaboration with Primary Care is now much easier; huge performance improvements are already being felt through a reduction in the manual processes involved in patient flow management; and so on.
“This is patient flow management, not bed management,” says Mark Thomas, Director of IM&T at the Trust. “RealTime is helping us to focus on the real work of looking after patient and we are delighted to be leading the way here in the North West by rolling out RealTime in Whitehaven and Carlisle. The system is flexible, easy to use, and well liked, and the eLearning programmes that our change management experts have assembled are making it easy to teach. We are in an intensive programme of transformation here in North Cumbria and RealTime’s role in the ForWard project is key to the success of this programme. RealTime helps us to collaborate on patients’ journeys across numerous levels, services and agencies, ensuring clinical best practice and an ability to manage patient journeys to clinical best practice targets, leading to reduced length of stay and numerous other benefits. RealTime has rapidly won hearts and minds across the board and is exciting a lot of interest, both inside and outside the Trust.”
Jim Gabriel, CEO of RealTime, added: “The work that Mark Thomas and his teams are accomplishing in North Cumbria is exceptional, and we are delighted to be working with such forward-looking healthcare professionals. This is exactly what RealTime was designed to facilitate, and the RealTime-driven rapid reduction in the average length of stay will lead fairly rapidly to impressive benefits realisation. North Cumbria University Hospitals can look forward to freeing up so many resources through improvements to the delivery of care that the savings will be counted in millions.”
14th December, 2011
Have a demo of RealTime through the eyes of the Oxford Times Business magazine journalist Gill Oliver.
or download the hard copy version:
The Oxford Times InBusiness from 08.12.11 “Logistics of care” by Gill Oliver
20th October, 2011
Now that we won 2 EHI Awards, we will be showing them off at the EHI Live 11 event. Come see a demo of RealTime at stand F20, Hall 3A, NEC Birmingham on 7-8 November. Don’t forget CEO Jim Gabriel will be speaking at the EHI Awards Theatre on 7th November (16:30-16:55, stand D60)
13th October, 2011
Learn all about the magical night – the finalists, the WINNERS, the fun! Find all about it at EHI Awards 2011 webpage
Watch our CTO Dave Nurse speak at the Awards
7th October, 2011
The winners of the EHI Awards 2011 in association with BT were announced at a black-tie dinner in London.
We are delighted to announce that the RealTime product has won the competition in the category Healthcare IT product Innovation and the prize of Overall Winner.
“We often hear concerns that the massive efficiency savings that the NHS will have to make over the next four years will inevitably put more stress on staff and lead to worse care for patients.”
“This is a brilliant example of how technology can be used to both save time and money and make care better. It is exactly this kind of innovation that the EHI Awards were set up to celebrate; and inspire others to adopt as well.”
Linda Davidson, co-director of eHealth Insider
Jim Gabriel, CEO of RealTime Health Ltd. will be speaking about the product in EHI Awards Theatre at EHI Live 2011 on 7th November in Birmingham.
You are most welcome to join us at this event and share the enjoyment!
6th September, 2011
Ashford & St. Peter’s Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (ASPH) has engaged RealTime Health to reduce length of stay on a performance target-based risk share arrangement. While we are used to working to performance targets in the US, this is the first time in the UK that we have been engaged on this basis and we are delighted to be breaking new ground with ASPH in this way. The deployment of RealTime to support the process improvement project will go live later this year. The process change work has started immediately and will entail a significant element of knowledge transfer.
West Middlesex University Hospital is close to Heathrow, London. High average length of stay (ALOS) was the biggest contributor to their financial deficit in 2009-10.
“We have been able to cut costs while improving the quality of care. RealTime allows us to marry resources with needs, has enabled a healthy discharge rhythm and has improved forward planning.”Simon Marshall, CFO, West Middlesex University Hospital
Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust signed a business partnership agreement with RealTime Health Ltd to enable both parties to profit from promoting the RealTime product in the market.
