The Winnipeg Regional Health Authority partnered with Canadian Company Oculys Health Informatics and rolled out the new Oculys Performance program in February, following five months of testing.
The software is designed to track bed usage and patient activity in various departments at the Grace in real time, allowing staff to better manage the flow of patients through the hospital.
This, in turn, leads to enhanced delivery of care in various departments, including emergency. Krista Williams, Chief Nursing Officer for the Grace is one of several leaders for implementation of the software program “Oculys is a visual tool that shows staff what’s happening in the hospital,” .
Prior to its inception, staff would spend a lot of time making phone calls and looking at various data sources to determine patient activity, admissions and discharges. By the time this information was collected to make decisions, it was already outdated. But with the new system in place, staff can access key information including emergency wait times, admissions, discharges, bed availability and more into a simple data set that provides real time information on all key areas of the hospital.“Very quickly, you can see how busy the hospital is, which allows us to shift resources around to match the demand. The result is bottlenecks in the system are eliminated and people get the service they need in a more timely way.” krista Williams.
The Oculys Solutions run on any device including laptops, tablets, mobile phones and computers. This “Anytime, Anywhere, Any Device” approach makes it easy for hospital staff to have access to the information that they need. A partnership between Oculys and Microsoft also ensures that the Oculys solutions are delivered securely.
The results that the Grace have seen post-implementation have been drastic:
1. Wait time for an inpatient bed at the Grace last April was 57 per cent lower than the same month in the previous year
2. The average length of stay in the emergency department in April improved by 20 per cent, when compared to the year previous.
Staff members at the Grace say Oculys has been so useful, they don’t know how they functioned prior to its introduction. “We were managing our resources without having all the information we needed to make timely, effective decisions,” says Rachel Ferguson, Chief Administrative Officer at the Grace and one of the project’s leaders. “Oculys allows us to see exactly what’s going on in the hospital now – even if we’re not there. I couldn’t imagine not having it now.”
The Oculys solutions are currently implemented in over 30 Canadian hospitals and are making headlines in the market.
* This post for the NHS FAB Network was adapted from the following news article which was published in the Winnipeg Sun: http://www.wrha.mb.ca/wave/2016/07/bottleneck-buster.php