SUCCESS STORY
Reducing waiting lists
A managed services partnership helps to treat more patients
Key facts
partner
University Hospital of South Manchester
100
More monthly patients
25%
Increase in activity
£1.4 million
Additional revenue per year
The University Hospital of South Manchester NHS Foundation Trust (UHSM) is a major teaching hospital recognised as a centre of excellence in cardiology and cardiothoracic surgery. With 950 beds, it draws patients from the North West of England and beyond. However, growing demand and demanding waiting list targets meant the Trust needed to do more with the same budget to improve patient access to care with no additional funding.
In that context, the Trust entered into a seven-year partnership with Integrated Health Solutions (IHS) in June 2013. This was the first ever long-term collaboration between the NHS and Medtronic newly created business entity IHS.
The objective was clear; be a long-term partner and support UHSM “beyond the devices” by:
- Providing state-of-the-art infrastructure and equipment and access to the latest technologies
- Bringing sustainable efficiency gains in the four CathLabs
- Enhancing patient outcomes and experience
- Improving staff satisfaction and empowerment
We created a tailored solution to address each of the Trust challenges.
1
Focus
Provide access to the latest cardiac technologies
2
Focus
Improve operational efficiency
3
Focus
Enhance patient experience
4
Focus
Improve staff satisfaction and empowerment
Focus 1: Provide access to the latest cardiac technologies
To help the hospital offer its patients the very latest innovations that would improve outcomes.
Focus 2: Improve operational efficiency
To enable the hospital to treat more patients using the same resources, they needed to optimise their operations and maximise their capacity.
- We took responsibility for full supply chain management – preserving clinicians’ freedom of choice:
- Deploying experienced CathLab managers on-site
- Automating procurement and inventory through a smart software solution
- Reorganising processes and workplace using Lean Six Sigma principles
- Applying a quality framework to standardise and maintain best practices
- We optimised processes to carve out extra capacity:
- Reducing delayed starts by implementing WHO surgical checklist to precipitate on time start
- Reducing under-runs by using data to plan lists and list allocation with more flexibility
- Reducing turnaround time between patients through a more equitable distribution of clinical work across the team (balancing capacity to meet demand)
Focus 3: Enhance patient experience
Because a hospital’s operations can have a direct impact on the patient experience, we are tracking how patients are responding to changes in the CathLabs. This has included so far:
- Creating a patient questionnaire for satisfaction surveys in collaboration with the Trust’s Patient Experience Team and in line with NHS requirements
- Implementing iPad functionality to capture real-time patient feedback
- Sharing feedback and data analysis with staff via a dedicated dashboard
Focus 4: Improve staff satisfaction and empowerment
To help staff feel empowered and to create a culture of continuous improvement, we offer training and live support via our Lean Academy - a training program enabling staff to deploy selected projects aimed at further increasing efficiency. Our courses have international accreditation from the Lean Enterprise Research Centre of Cardiff University.
This work is ongoing and includes:
Tracking what we do can be challenging. We introduced a data-driven standard scorecard to measure our impact on efficiency and productivity.
In just three years, the partnership has achieved:
The Trust is now also looking to expand the model into other areas including in Operating Theatres in order to enable new investment and deliver further financial and operational efficiencies to improve the service they are offering to their patients.
What our happy patients say:
Patient satisfaction surveys are regularly conducted.
Within a couple of hours of my consultant confirming I needed a CathLab procedure I had been transferred to UHSM and I was in the lab having my angiography performed.”— UHSM patient
My consultant told me he had been able to use the latest available technology to ensure I had the best recovery outcome possible.”— UHSM patient
What our happy staff say:
Quarterly customer satisfaction surveys are performed for continuous feedback integration.
The partnership is seamless with Medtronic staff totally part of the CathLab team. We are able to replace equipment and expand the department by building a fifth Lab.”— Lead cardiac radiographer UHSM
Friendly approachable staff with good on-site presence. They make our lives easier.”— CathLab Manager
We have a very good relationship with Medtronic. We work together as a team, and the availability of all stock and the uptime of equipment are extremely high.”— CathLab Nursing Manager
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