New Command Centre improves patient journey through surgery
St John of God Health Care has developed and installed new ‘clinical command’ technology in its St John of God Murdoch Hospital operating theatres, resulting in less waiting time for patients and more time for theatre caregivers to spend on patient care.
30 Jan 2018
30 January 2018
From the new Clinical Command Centre, a patient’s progress in their journey through theatres is highly visible and trackable on large digital screens; from the time a patient is admitted to hospital; through to being prepared for surgery and having their surgery performed; to then being monitored in recovery post-surgery before returning to the hospital ward.
As the name suggests, the Clinical Command Centre is the hub that ensures that service and order is maintained, with information feeding into and out of a central location.
The typical journey that a patient takes through theatres is complex and relies on a number of processes working concurrently in order to be seamless.
For a single procedure, a patient may come into contact with around 12 caregivers. There can be up to 120 patients passing through St John of God Murdoch Hospital’s 16 theatres on any given day.
From a commanding view of a series of digital screens that fill an entire wall in the Clinical Command Centre, the newly-created role of Perioperative Flow Manager manages and responds to the information displayed to ensure each patient’s surgical journey flows smoothly from start to finish.
With this perspective, the Perioperative Flow Manager can trouble-shoot any delays or issues and assign or re-allocate additional caregivers to resolve them accordingly.
More than ever before, caregivers and doctors can adapt and respond to changes within the theatres environment quickly, and communicate with their patients effectively to help ease anxiety.
As is the nature of hospitals, emergency situations and last-minute theatre bookings can arise, and the Perioperative Flow Manager has the oversight to be able to book these into the theatres schedule at late notice, while minimising the impact on other theatre activities, and effectively communicate these changes to all impacted areas of theatres as quickly as possible.
The information gathered for the Clinical Command Centre is also displayed on user-friendly and intuitive digital dashboard screens installed throughout the hospital at all stages of the surgical process including admissions, day surgery holding bay, theatres, recovery and on the wards.
Whereas once, more than half a dozen phone calls were made throughout the theatres to track a single patient’s progress; now, every caregiver involved in a patient’s care can determine their whereabouts at any point in time simply by referring to the dashboards.
The information displayed allows admissions and ward caregivers to provide anxiously awaiting family with updates on when their loved ones will arrive back to their hospital room.
The new system, which was uniquely designed and developed in-house for St John of God Health Care, will provide advanced analytics on theatre utilisation and allow the hospital to continually improve its service delivery for the benefit of patients, staff and doctors.
The successful implementation of the Clinical Command Centre at St John of God Murdoch Hospital will see this new technology introduced at other divisions within the St John of God Health Care group from 2018.