HEALTHCARE & HOSPITAL FACILITIES
“THE UNIT HAS
CREATED 50 MORE CLINIC SLOTS A
DAY, ALLOWING CLINICIANS TO
SEE 12,500 MORE PATIENTS PER YEAR.”
dirty utilities, procedure rooms and recovery bays, as well as staff facilities and private locker rooms.
EXCEPTIONAL
CONVENIENCE Mobile units, in particular, have the capability to offer unprecedented levels of patient experience through the ability to regularly move from location to location, resulting in an agile solution that can reach the heart of communities. This falls entirely in line with the target for more out-of- hospital care underlined throughout the NHS’s Five Year Forward View, a set of guidelines placed in 2014 to ensure sustainability for the service.
Travelling to and from hospitals, especially for regular treatments, isn’t always convenient for those who may struggle to arrange travel, such as the elderly, so there is a very current and increasing need for these flexible services, and more community-led care. This was the reasoning behind a new unit we recently developed, Quest Plus, which has been designed specifically for the treatment of macular diseases such as wet AMD, an eye condition that causes individuals to lose central vision. The unit takes just one hour to set up and can be moved on a daily basis, providing clinicians the support to reach patients with reduced vision whom require regular intravenous injections.
The benefits of out-of-hospital care for both patients and facilities managers are two-fold; as well as freeing up space at the hospital and providing a safe environment, taking services into the community means patients can use free parking, and the demand in hospital car parks can be eased. This helps avoid unnecessary stress for patients, visitors and carers, and aids facilities managers in implementing effective parking systems for those that do need to visit the hospital.
SUCCESS STORIES The ‘one-stop’ community clinic
environment of the units not only offers uncompromised care throughout treatment, but also increases hospital efficiencies by taking patients out of the hospital referral system. An excellent example of this is the project we have been working on with Frimley Park Hospital over the past three years, in which we deployed our two-trailer Liberty unit to aid in the delivery of quality care for macular patients.
The unit is moved to a different convenient community location each week, and has created 50 more clinic slots a day, allowing clinicians to see 12,500 more patients per year. Patient experience surveys have seen vast improvements, with 92% of patients agreeing that the unit is more convenient than attending appointments at the hospital. The
number of patients with acceptable waiting times has climbed from 12% to 96%, and 95% of patients rated their experience of Liberty as ‘excellent’. Prior to the partnership, patients were spending 81 minutes on average in the macular department – this has now been reduced to just 32 minutes.
COLLABORATION AND
IMPLEMENTATION Using suppliers, such as EMS Healthcare or others on the NHS’s Mobile Diagnostics, Theatres, Treatment and Therapy Services Framework, will allow for a quicker procurement process and deployment within six-to-eight weeks of enquiry, meaning units can be installed in a reactive manner when trusts are under pressure. However, the best results we see are always when trusts plan ahead and recognise that an issue is approaching.
Whilst mobile and modular builds can offer significant benefits to facilities managers, there are also obvious values for clinicians, nurses and property managers too. The effects of the rise in demand across NHS services have an impact on all areas of operation; so it’s vital for decision makers across the board to collaborate in implementing innovative solutions for a sustainable NHS.
www.ems-healthcare.com
www.tomorrowsfm.com
TOMORROW’S FM | 55
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