Frimley Park Hospital improves operating room efficiency with critical care system

The British Journal of Healthcare Computing & Information Management
16 November 2010

Frimley Park Hospital Foundation Trust has improved utilization of its operating room (OR) suites by 5% within months of going live with a critical care system from Picis in its surgical, anaesthesia, postanaesthesia and urgent care areas.

Medical staff review and refine practices based on near real-time data from the software, thus helping clinicians improve patient safety and care, as well as efficiency, which enables the hospital to reduce perioperative delays and treat more patients in less time.

Suzanne Wills, Acting Deputy General Manager at the Trust said, "We had no consistency in the way in which OR bookings were managed. Picis has standardized the process of entry and booking. Now that we have one format and one process, we can schedule operations far more efficiently. We can identify the source of unnecessary delays at any stage and take any required corrective actions. We're cutting down on wasted time, and that saves money."

"We now have total perioperative automation," said Loua Shaikh MD, Consultant Anaesthesist/ Intensivist at the hospital. "With remote access, I can review patient care with up-to-date information in front of me. I'm not reliant on anyone else's interpretation. All this is done securely. Rather than interpreting opinions, I'm basing my advice on the facts."

Dr William Jewsbury, Consultant Anaesthetist and Lead Clinician for critical care at the hospital said, "This will help clinicians improve quality of care. We can easily review our work to see if what we ask to be done is actually done. It will help us understand our deficits and allow us to do something about them. Our records now contain many more data points than previously, but the beauty of the system is that so much of it is automated; it frees up more of my time to focus on patient care."

"We're all being challenged to do more with less in the NHS, while we maintain high standards for patient care," said Andrew Morris, Chief Executive of Frimley Park Hospital NHS Foundation Trust since 1991. "The Picis solution is delivering on both of its promises, helping us to boost efficiency and performance, and helping us to drive up our standards of care. Of all the computer applications we've implemented here at Frimley Park Hospital, this has been the most successful."