We want patients to understand what is happening at the four hospitals we run, so they can make better decisions about their treatment.One of the steps we have taken recently is to share information about our performance by publishing live waiting times for each of our EDs on the trust website. It’s on the home page so anyone can see at a glance how we are doing.
In most NHS organisations seeing how many people are in a your ED, or whether you can close a surgical ward over the weekend, involves protracted telephone conversations to various on-duty staff. We believe there are better ways to deliver information. We hear "information is power" a great deal these days, but it is more basic than that.
Simply put, in 2015 it is unacceptable for a COO not to know how their ED is performing at any moment in time. We have created an web-app that allows our staff to access real-time performance information. We have called it Operation Control Centre (OCC).
The OCC provides an overarching view of an entire organisation onto any mobile (or desktop) device. The web-app automatically extracts live patient data, aggregates (removing any IG hurdles) and pushes to a secure cloud server. This data is available to any authenticated user, allowing in-call staff to view a real-time position of their ED and bed state. This real-time data is available to any staff that requests access, as well as our respective CCG leads.
This information helps to transform the way our organisation is managed - moving from reactive to proactive performance monitoring with actionable information. The app is completely customisable, allowing organisations to choose the most appropriate bespoke performance measures. The next step for Beautiful Information is to put more information in the hands of local people. This is a bold move and one that won’t be taken lightly. However, we think it is the right thing to do and it is part of our drive for great transparency at the trust. We are currently discussing how much of it we should publish and it is likely that a version of the app will be made freely available.If you would like to find out more about Beautiful Information at East Kent Hospitals University NHS FT please don’t hesitate to get in touch or visit: http://beautifulinformation.org.
Richard Ewins, Information Development Lead, East Kent Hospitals University NHS FT