Failing to achieve optimal patient flow across a hospital puts patients at risk for suboptimal care and potential harm. It also increases the burden on clinicians and hospital staff, possibly accelerating burnout.

Established two years ago to focus on improving efficiencies and reducing delays, our collaborative shifted focus to improving medical and surgical efficiencies in April, following delays caused by COVID 19.

The project was completed in July. We’re pleased to announce we’ve exceeded our initial aim which was to impact 300 lives. We’re delighted to report this work has impacted 788 lives.

This includes:

• 231 patients clearly timestamped medically ready with immediate sharing of this information to the multidisciplinary team to action outstanding tasks for discharge
• Multidisciplinary rounds changes across 4 wards resulted in improved communication and care planning for 250 patients
• 41 patients 50% less likely to be readmitted to hospital
• 27 patients discharged on the day they expected
• 102 patients didn’t spend ¾ of a day in hospital waiting to go home

Improved workflow coordination has been achieved by implementing and making use of a medical readiness timestamp tool to signal when patients have met all medical readiness criteria and discharge goals.

We would like to thank the partners who worked on the collaborative over the past two years.