Scarborough and North East Yorkshire Healthcare NHS Trust has gone ‘live’ with a pioneering improvement programme designed to reduce the length of a patient’s hospital stay.

The hospital trust is the first one in the country to introduce RealTime onto its wards – a computerised clinical process system which will help manage its discharge planning more effectively as well as helping ensure patients are seen more quickly and reducing the risk of contracting an infection.

RealTime uses state-of-the-art software to give staff the tools to reduce a patient’s average length of stay and help improve patient flow while safeguarding and improving clinical services.

Richard Sunley, Chief Executive at the Trust, said: “We are delighted to be leading the way here at Scarborough with the introduction of RealTime.   

“No one likes spending time in hospital, and we want to make sure that our patients are treated safely, whilst spending the least amount of days in hospital as possible. Reducing the average length of a patient’s stay will also reduce the risk of patients developing healthcare associated infections such as MRSA and C. Difficile.

“RealTime involves every member of staff in the discharge process and aims to improve a patient’s journey through our hospitals.

“We initially embarked on this programme in November, however before rolling it out onto the wards we wanted to make sure that we had the correct processes in place to enable us to roll it out successfully.

“Our in house IT trainers have done an excellent job in training our staff and staff feedback has been extremely positive once staff have seen how easy it is to use and the immediate benefits it brings.   

Jim Gabriel, CEO of RealTime, added: “We are delighted to be working in partnership with Scarborough and North East Yorkshire Healthcare NHS Trust.

“They are the first Trust in the country to have gone live with RealTime and the feedback from staff has been extremely positive. RealTime makes it much easier for everybody involved in the patient’s progress to collaborate and apply best clinical practices to the way the patient’s discharge is planned and managed. This has enabled the Trust to introduce and manage clinically driven length of stay targets for hundreds of conditions. Doing this in such a structural way is a huge step forward for any Trust, and we are really impressed by everybody’s willingness in Scarborough to embrace such visionary practices.

“Now that RealTime is live on the wards many other Trusts from across the country have expressed an interest in coming to Scarborough to see it in action – Scarborough really is leading the way.

 “The Trust was correct to get the right processes in place first. To help with this, we engaged York-based CMA Associates as our implementation partners because of their expertise in healthcare transformation management. CMA’s Director, Carol Limber, who has a clinical background and over 20 years’ experience across the NHS, headed up the work on the wards on behalf of RealTime and was instrumental in engaging staff with the RealTime approach, and the mind-shift required to drive the change.

Carol Limber said: “The focused approach of the Trust and strong leadership from its Project Manager, Jo Southwell and the Implementation Team, has been crucial in driving this project forward. Every Trust in the country is faced with the challenge of reducing length of stay and Scarborough has demonstrated that the key to this is engaging all stakeholders and adopting a robust and focussed plan to carry this forward. Their drive, enthusiasm and desire to embrace these changes have made them a pleasure to work with.”

Dave Nurse, Chief Technical Officer at RealTime Health, said “The Trust’s RealTime project team have demonstrated great team work and a desire that has helped us to deliver this project on agreed timescales and to budget.”

RealTime is now live on all wards at Scarborough Hospital apart from the Children’s Ward which will introduce it on 28 June.  Training has now started at Bridlington with a go live date planned for 14 June.