Emergency departments are the front line of healthcare, providing critical care to patients in need. In these fast-paced and high-pressure environments, efficient and streamlined operations are vital. Efficient coordination between healthcare professionals and porters is crucial for ensuring patients receive prompt care. Hull University Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust embarked on their journey to digitise the ED portering management system to meet the evolving demand of a rapidly changing healthcare landscape in four simple touches.
The Need For Change
Manual paper-based systems often caused delays, miscommunication, and administrative errors. As the demand for healthcare services continues to rise, the limitations of paper-based systems became increasingly apparent. The inefficiencies in coordinating patient transfers, managing equipment, and communicating urgent requests posed challenges to staff productivity and patient care. Recognising these obstacles, Hull University Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust decided to integrate MyPorter, a digital portering solution, with touchscreen devices to enable porter requests using the solutions’ Wizard Task Creator - a simple four-touch process to send a detailed task to a Porter - to address these issues head-on.
Enhanced Capacity Management
As a fast-paced healthcare environment, Emergency Departments often face resource constraints including limited porter availability. The integration of touchscreens with a digital portering system enables the trust to optimise capacity within ED. The system provides real-time visibility into portering requests, allowing for efficient allocation of resources. The system proactively encourages staff to identify bottlenecks and allocate portering services based on demands, further enhancing capacity management.
David May, Deputy Head of Facilities Logistics said “One of the key things that we find works very well is what we call push and pull. If an area increases activity quickly or on a short period of time the system would highlight that and we would put porters into the area”.
Dave Houghton, Interim Portering Postal & Switchboard Manager, said “It has enabled us to allocate porters to the right area quicker. It has also increased patient flow because now we have the right porter, in the right place, at the right time”
Helen Ingleson, Senior Matron, said “I would highly recommend MyPorter in ED. We’ve seen such a massive improvement; from jobs that have been requested, we can keep an audit trail and we always know where the porters are, where they are on the job. (Also), time spent with patients instead of chasing about looking after them (nurses no longer doing porter tasks), it’s just been absolutely amazing”.
Improved Efficiency
The digital portering management system offers numerous features that enhance operational efficiency in emergency departments. It enables staff to request portering services electronically with only a 4-touch process, eliminating the need for manual paperwork, speeding up the process needed within rapid and reactive environments such as ED. Mark Vipond, Porter Supervisor said “The touchscreens are really simple. You can set them up how the departments want them set up and literally in the touch of three or four buttons”.
Jay Choudry, Porter Supervisor, “MyPorter has brought a lot of efficiencies to the department. It helps us prioritise what tasks should be done at what point of the day” and continues to highlight how easy it is to put a porter request ever since the transition using the touchscreen saying, “It’s as simple as the name suggests – it's a touchscreen and it’s touch, touch, and go”.
Graham Taylor, Portering Officer, said “The data that we can produce in MyPorter enables to see our peaks and our troughs”. “We’re looking at efficiencies all the time. Ways to shave even seconds here and there. On average we’ve figured out (using the data from MyPorter) that we’ve saved 1 and a half minutes per task”.
Teamwork makes the dream work
The transition from a paper-based system to a digital system presented the team with challenges but the team made the transition effortless by working together. Zara Ridge, Head of Facilities Management, said “I think one of the things I’m really proud of is the team and how well they’ve worked with the system. Going from a very manual paper-based system to an electronic system and they’ve done that effortlessly. I think (we’ve seen) such hard work from everybody, so it’s been a really really positive step and something that we want to continue and build with MyPorter and Global View (GV Healthcare)”.
Get in touch today to see how MyPorter touchscreen can transform patient flow in your Emergency Department. Email myporter@globalviewsystems.co.uk or call +44 (0) 1482 772536
