What is RealTime?
RealTime is a programme of clinical process improvement consultancy backed up by real time decision support, discharge planning and patient flow management software. RealTime will help you rapidly free up beds by reducing length of stay through the innovative re-engineering of clinical process around discharge planning and patient journeys. The process improvement is clinician led, based on a proven clinician developed methodology that enables all aspects of discharge planning to be clinically driven and collaboratively managed.
The RealTime software has been purpose-built to support this, giving you clinically driven ED and inpatient flow management, clinically driven discharge planning, real time bed states, full Admit / Discharge / Transfer functionality (ADT), location-based infection control support, and comprehensive evidence-based KPI reporting. RealTime can integrate operational and clinical process like no other IT system because it has been designed from the outset to support transformational performance improvement, and is therefore built on a highly detailed performance metrics repository for full decision support, audit trail, capacity planning and ongoing business management.
Clinical process change methodology
The RealTime methodology is delivered and led by senior clinicians and encompasses phases of assessment, planning and implementation. The methodology has consistently been able to improve ALOS by 10-30% and engage clinicians in ongoing improvements. This has yielded sustained financial improvements of $5-20M annually for clients in the US. Quality of care is improved by decreased readmissions of patients and improvements in meeting chronic disease-specific national standard of care targets. Hospital readmissions are improved by means of daily monitoring of defined quality parameters for patients with key diagnoses. (Back to top...)
Technology
"The right patient, in the right place, at the right time..."
Designed and built in Oxford, UK, RealTime provides real time bed states, discharge planning and management, infection control, and performance metrics for all users, from Chief Executive to Hotel Services. RealTime also includes world-class bed management functionality. Unlike conventional bed management systems, however, RealTime can be inserted easily into existing infrastructure to provide a web-based, point-and-click, simple to use set of graphical tools and views that allow the discharge process to be managed across multiple sites in real time, against agreed key performance indicators.
The RealTime software application provides real time views of bed occupancy across whole trusts, categorised by ward, condition, diagnosis, breach reason, etc. RealTime helps hospitals solve three key problems: reducing average length of stay (ALOS); knowing where the patients are; and reducing and monitoring Healthcare Associated Infections. RealTime provides fully configurable, graphical views that are accessible 24x7 with drill down into ward/department views to show location, status of care and expected discharge time for each patient. This functionality is far superior to the equivalent functionality in conventional bed management and patient flow systems because it is applied in a performance improvement framework that is geared at all times to reducing length of stay in the most clinically responsible manner possible. (Back to top...)
Return on Investment
The business case for RealTime is highly compelling. In the words of Roger Parsons, Chief Financial Officer, San Antonio Community Hospital, Upland, CA (300 acute care beds): "The length of stay reduction project is the most successful project we have ever had. It is the best example of continuous improvement I have ever seen. We reduced our ALOS for Medicare by 30% and saved $10-15M annually."
There is a clearly demonstrable return based on the number of freed up bed days that has enabled risk-reward compensation to be the norm for Eagle projects in the US. Clearly, in the NHS in the UK, freeing up bed days can have a wide range of possible implications, from taking on more procedures to closing expensive and unneeded wards. A bed day typically costs in the region of £300, ‘all in’. Freeing up a bed day may not translate directly to a saving of £300, but will allow consequent savings of between one and two thirds of that value in any environment working on improving performance through length of stay reduction. Whatever the model applied, however, the savings attributable to freed up bed days have a value that can be used as a yardstick for the performance improvements, and in itself this value to the NHS trust concerned will be in the order of 10-20 times the cost of the RealTime project within the first year. (Back to top...)
