Consistently Meeting Targets and Managing Demand at Golden Jubilee National Hospital

male patient smiling while speaking with his doctor during an exam

CUSTOMER: Golden Jubilee National Hospital

CHALLENGE: Meeting patient waiting time standards with a growing demand for services

OUTCOME: 100% compliance with government waiting time guarantees

Real-time information sharing and process improvement, enabled by InterSystems TrakCare®, is helping Scotland’s Golden Jubilee National Hospital to manage demand and meet challenging government targets.

Transforming Care in a Modern Hospital

Situated on the banks of the River Clyde, Glasgow’s Golden Jubilee National Hospital is home to the regional and national heart and lung services. It is one of the leading hospitals for orthopaedics in the United Kingdom, as well as being a National Waiting Times Centre and the flagship hospital in NHS Scotland for reducing waiting times in key elective specialties.

Facilities across the campus include four cardiac catheterisation laboratories, 16 theatres, state-of-the-art diagnostic imaging suites and approximately 230 patient beds. Doctors at Golden Jubilee perform more than 25 per cent of all hip and knee replacements for NHS Scotland – more than 500,000 since 2002.

In the last five years, the Golden Jubilee Hospital has become one of the busiest heart and lung centres in Europe. It is also one of Europe’s largest orthopaedic centres and performs more than 15 per cent of all cataract operations in Scotland.

In the face of this growing demand, the hospital is maintaining 100 per cent compliance with the national Treatment Time Guarantee (TTG) targets – and it’s being powered by InterSystems TrakCare.

The Importance of Waiting Times

Waiting times are important to patients and are a measure of how the National Health Service (NHS) is responding to demands for services. The Treatment Time Guarantee is one of many Local Delivery Plan (LDP) Standards which are set and agreed between the Scottish Government and NHS Boards to provide assurance on NHS Scotland performance.

table - Consistently Meeting Targets, Managing Demand - Golden Jubilee National Hospital

"I enjoy using Trakcare; It is easy to use and provides quick access to key information."

A recent study by Channel 3 Consulting* of the Golden Jubilee National Hospital’s TrakCare implementation found that the unified Electronic Medical Record (EMR) is helping the hospital, not only to optimise workflow but to also eliminate time-wasting inefficiencies in processes and administration.

TrakCare is also supporting staff to perform their roles more effectively, raising the quality of care, and driving improvement.

At the heart of change, TrakCare is ensuring that every patient at the Golden Jubilee National Hospital experiences high-quality healthcare services.

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National Strategy, Local Impact

Introduced to the hospital in June 2015 as part of the national implementation of Scotland’s national Patient Management System, TrakCare, InterSystems unified healthcare information system, is helping the Golden Jubilee Hospital respond to the challenges it faces.

The hospital has benefited from the introduction of a comprehensive range of TrakCare functionality that is helping to transform care, such as PAS (Patient Administration System), EPR, inpatients management, bed management, outpatients management, medical records management, referral and waiting list management, correspondence, national statutory returns, reporting, and interfaces to national systems.[/callout_box]

Simple and Intuitive... TrakCare Is Improving the Lives of Patients, with Staff Positive About Its Benefits

"Trakcare is simple and intuitive. It has remained a reliable system."

Staff at the Golden Jubilee have reacted positively, praising the system for its simplicity and ease of use. TrakCare’s intuitive workflows guide users through standardised processes, facilitating the creation of standardised patient communications.

The system has helped to save time for busy staff, improving efficiency and increasing their resilience in the face of growing demand for referrals and the need for effective waiting list management.

Increasing Demand

TrakCare is helping the hospital to manage demand in an increasingly pressured environment, meeting challenging targets year after year.

2015-16

Golden Jubilee National Hospital performed 36,015 inpatient, day case and diagnostic examinations.
That’s 3,400 procedures more than anticipated at the beginning of the year, and 10.5 per cent ahead of plan.

2016-17

Golden Jubilee National Hospital performed 40,929 inpatient, day case and diagnostic examinations.
That’s 3,000 procedures more than anticipated at the beginning of the year, and 8.1 per cent ahead of plan.

Increasing Clinical Capacity

TrakCare is streamlining resource usage, relieving the pressure on systems, reducing waiting times and improving patient satisfaction.

Improved clinic rescheduling has seen the number of unfilled clinic slots reduce by 5%

An analysis of publicly available data also found that in the two full years following TrakCare’s introduction:

Efficiencies have enabled an additional 3,000 patients to be treated in the outpatients department

Improving Waiting List Management

TrakCare has dramatically improved the referral process, automatically adding patients to the appropriate waiting list. A key part of the automation of linked processes, the time taken on routine tasks like creating patient letters has been cut dramatically, in some cases by over 50 per cent.

table - Improvement in speed of generating letters after implementing TrakCare

"Bad view helps us to see patients and to track patient movements, efficiently and effectively."

Using TrakCare, staff are able to add comments and notes about patients and their planned care to waiting list entries. They can add information about the need for pre-operative X-rays or blood tests.

Streamlined Correspondence

Before TrakCare was introduced, Golden Jubilee National Hospital had 192 letter templates. Today, there are just 14, covering all circumstances and scenarios.

By reducing the number of templates the hospital is using, TrakCare has streamlined the process, saving staff precious time, and reducing complaints to the local health board.

table - Improvement after implementing TrakCare

Inpatient Bed Management

Replacing the traditional system of inpatient bed management with TrakCare is helping the hospital staff to manage capacity more effectively.

"My job is so much easier now with Trakcare. The volume of referrals we now manage could not be achieved with our previous system."

TrakCare’s inpatient bed management functionality has been welcomed by unit coordinators, who consider the system easy to use and effective. The seamless connectivity enabled by TrakCare is improving bed booking, with its real-time electronic views of the bed state report.

At the Golden Jubilee National Hospital, InterSystems TrakCare is delivering:

Greater staff satisfaction
Improved financial performance
A better patient experience

As a national resource with a commitment to leading quality, research, and innovation, Golden Jubilee’s leaders know how important it is for patients to be seen quickly, at the right time and right place, but it is equally important to receive a high quality service too. Streamlining and sharing information has reduced admin time, enabling Golden Jubilee to meet their targets, and enabled clinical staff to focus on what’s important – patient care.

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