With waiting lists across the UK at an all-time high, NHS Highland have taken major steps to ensure their patients are treated fast and in clinical priority order. Two projects in the most critical specialties are already delivering significant results. Cancer Tracking is revolutionising ways of working in cancer teams across Highland and the new National Treatment Centre in Inverness is tackling the waiting lists with the biggest backlogs – Ophthalmology and Orthopaedics.
Behind both projects is the advanced, unified data of the Insource elective recovery solution – Patient Pathway Plus (PP+). Data needed to streamline patient care is all too often locked away in disparate IT systems across the care landscape. What Insource brings is the capability to bring all this data together, into one place, validate it to ensure data accuracy, and standardise it so we can compare like-with-like, then make it available to clinicians and managers for informed care.
Cancer Tracking – data-led cancer management
In NHS Highland, the Insource collaboration has delivered a pro-active, service-led solution that helps up to 450 operational and clinical staff work together to streamline care and speedily identify next steps. As we know, in cancer, speed to accurate diagnosis and treatment is the route to successful outcomes. PP+ visualises all cancer pathways by tumour types, key milestones, last known events, planned next steps, treatment types, locations… and, perhaps most importantly, gives immediate visibility of any delays or hidden capacity.
This single source of the truth allows staff to accurately track patients from referral to treatment. It highlights bottlenecks and turns what has historically been a retrospective, centralised reporting system into a pro-active, service-led platform used across the region to improve care.
Aimed at minimising stress for patients, this joint strategic solution brings real-time care and process data to frontline staff. It gives a visible portrayal for the management of all patients through their cancer journey and their statutory milestones. It provides a full operational tool to remote cancer teams across Highland, Argyll and Bute and will help save hundreds of man hours in ad hoc and manual statutory reporting. Highland Cancer Tracking puts the patient at the heart of the cancer care process.
Download the case study – here.
National Treatment Centre – fast-tracking Ophthalmology and Orthopaedic patients
National Treatment Centres (NTCs) are a key NHS Scotland initiative to bring down the backlogs. In Highland the biggest waiting lists are in ophthalmology and orthopaedics. And the newly built NTC in Inverness has 13 consultation rooms, 5 theatres, and 24 beds dedicated to surgical and outpatient eye care, hip and knee replacements and daycase foot, ankle and hand surgery.
Fulcrum to the operational success of the project is the single version of the truth data pack on which all care activities will be based. Data will be combined from different systems across the region and the integrated solution will include Infix Theatre Scheduling.
The system will track demand, capacity, activity and waiting lists. The aim is to ensure no patient will be cancelled on the day of surgery and the project will maximise the use of all the theatres and skilled staff on site. Currently only 60% of any theatre time is used for ‘Knife to Skin’. With this new ‘attention to detail scheduling’ far more procedures can be done. And the increase in activity will significantly reduce waiting times across the region!
To find out more about the projects join our Leadership Session at FUTURESCOT Health and Care Transformation, 30 March in Glasgow