Visual Hospital Training

You may be interested to know that we are now offering a one day ‘master class’ training session in the manual version of our Visual Hospital process.

Whilst the full benefits of our touch screen Visual Hospital (e-VH) may not be realised, many organisations both in the UK and mainland Europe are enjoying significant improvements in average Length of Stay (LoS) by employing our manual version. These improvements include reductions in medical patient LoS of up to 30% and over 40% for that of Trauma patients. The manual version of the Visual Hospital also provides a perfect platform in readiness for organisations wishing to introduce e-VH

Although reductions in the average LoS are important for upward reporting purposes, of greater significance (to us anyway) is that these reductions have been accompanied by vast reductions in the variation in LoS which means ‘stability’ a stable and predictable process.

The Visual Hospital process works by visualising patient demand for discharge and acting upon this demand. Whilst some of the more enlightened organisations can now provide patient ‘demand to get in’ from their Emergency Department or via GP referral our observation is that whilst they may know this demand to get in, they never really know their patient ‘demand to get out’, the demand for discharge. It simply cannot be seen.

Most organisations now freely admit that patient demand to get in is actually very predictable. Likewise, we can confirm that demand to get out is equally predictable by the day and by specialty.

It is absolutely normal that, at any given time between 25% and 35% of beds on wards are occupied by patients who are medically fit enough for a safe discharge or transfer to their next planned destination, but they are still occupying that bed, for numerous reason, now the wrong bed. This is the true demand to get out.

The aim of this ‘master class’ training session is to provide an organisation’s staff with the skills to set up and run the Visual Hospital.

Our one day session involves us attending your organisations’ site of your choice to train key staff in:

The collection of data
Visualisation of this data
Analysis of the data
The ‘closed loop’ assignment of actions to appropriate staff
Knowledge and skills transfer enabling self sufficiency in the process
The method for measuring LoS improvements realised
Creation of a plan to implement the Visual Hospital

If you organisation is interested in participating in this ‘master class’ training session please do not hesitate to contact us at: info@visualhealthcaresolutions.com

Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust wins HSJ Best Acute Trust award

We are honoured to be working in partnership with Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust who recently won the prestigious award.

The Trust had to fight off tough opposition from several other Foundation Trusts including University College London Hospitals, Derby Hospitals, Northumbria Healthcare and Salford Royal.

After much deliberation the Judges chose Calderdale and Huddersfield describing them as “an extremely impressive and rounded organisation where care has been improved by focusing not just on safety but also on individual patient outcomes”.

The judging panel continued: “Calderdale and Huddersfield has shown a clear vision, excellent involvement and engagement with clinicians and a systematic application of improvement processes”.

We can only agree with the judge’s decision. Having worked with many healthcare organisations both across the UK and overseas we have noted that Calderdale and Huddersfield appear to be somewhat of an outlier compared to many in that, as opposed to regarding lean as an additional project, they rapidly integrate successful lean experiments into their mainstream management processes.

The Trust elected to work with us after firstly reading copies of our latest publication, the book, ‘Making Hospitals Work’ and then by sending key staff on our 2 day workshop based on the book.

Since working with us they have, by employing just some of the initial processes laid out in the book, reduced the average Length of Stay (LoS) for Medical patients on their Huddersfield by 24.75% and by 40.42% for Emergency Surgical Patients in less than six months!!!! Whilst benefiting from a vast reduction in the variation in LoS.

They have recently duplicated the same processes on their Calderdale site and expecting to enjoy improvements of a similar magnitude.

Tania King, our main point of contact and Service Improvement Lead for the organisation explained “The first secret weapon (and there are many more to come) that we’ve employed is what Ian and Marc call the Visual Hospital. Since implementing just the Visual Hospital across both our sites we have seen a significant reduction in length of stay which is being maintained. Whilst I always had faith in the process I didn’t imagine the results would be so remarkable. We’re finally starting to achieve some stability in the patient flow processes in our hospitals”

May we take this opportunity to congratulate the Trust staff that made winning this award possible.