Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust (NUH) has experienced greater patient safety, improved workforce planning and increased productivity with IT solution Nervecentre.

Implemented in September 2010, Nervecentre has increased the efficiency of the Hospital @ Night (H@N) system across the Trust’s Nottingham City Hospital and Queen’s Medical Center sites. With more than 13,000 staff and 1,700 beds, the NUH needed a solution that would effectively manage communications between staff and deliver real-time information to the appropriate personnel.

“The system enables the ward staff to simply type their request on their ward computer using national guideline tool SBAR which is instantly presented to the H@N coordinator’s screen, outlining exactly the condition of the patient and what is needed,” said Debbie Guy, lead nurse for H@N.

“The coordinator can now see in real time which doctors are on duty, where they are, their skill set and how much work they have to do," she added. "Nervecentre enables them to allocate the most suitable available person to each task.”

Matt Howden, head of service design in ICT Services, agreed: “It has … significantly improved governance giving us an accurate record of all staff productivity.”

Previously, H@N coordinators, many of whom have strong clinical skills, were often deskbound, handling more than 1,000 calls per site, per week, added Guy. Since there was no visible priority attached to the calls, the coordinators could not tell if any of the calls related to a patient whose condition was critical. With Nervecentre, coordinators can use a tablet computer to prioritize and process all of the information at hand while spending more time in the wards.

“Nottingham came to use because they wanted to improve patient safety,” said Paul Volkaerts, managing director of Nervecentre Software, Ltd.

One of the major benefits of the technology is the amount of time shifted from administrative duties to patient care. “We are now looking to the future and are in the process of rolling this out to other parts of the Trust,” said Volkaerts.