East Surrey Hospital chooses Intouch for digital outpatients project
East Surrey Hospital, part of Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust, is working with Intouch with Health to support the digital transformation of its outpatient department in a project that will help deliver an improved hospital experience for patients while alleviating pressure on its admin and clinical teams.
The hospital recently launched Intouch’s patient Check-in and patient Calling modules, in addition to Flow Manager and Wait Time Manager to support the live management and communication of waiting times for outpatients.
The five-year contract will focus on using Intouch with Health’s digital patient flow management technology to deliver fully-integrated outpatient flow while improving access to associated patient data using Flow Manager, Intouch’s central patient flow digital dashboard.
Flow Manager will allow hospital staff to monitor the location and status of each visiting patient in the department throughout the duration of their appointment. Staff can view the status of each patient - including if they have arrived and checked-in or if they are late, if they have been called to be seen, and if the appointment has started.
The entire patient journey can be planned, managed and updated through the dashboard, providing one single version of the truth for all staff, and full PAS / EPR integration enhances care coordination across departments and helps to eliminate or reduce unnecessary processes, realising significant operational efficiencies and further improving the patient experience.
Using Wait Time Manager, the hospital can display live waiting time updates on digital calling screens throughout outpatients, which are calculated in real-time and automatically inform staff and patients if a delay is imminent.
Speaking about the project, Sue Carter, Project Manager at Intouch with Health said: “The team at Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust have been a pleasure to work with. The project was coordinated excellently by the Trust project manager, Joanne Macaulay, who was a pleasure to work with and made everything run smoothly.
“The introduction of Flow Manager at East Surry Hospital will be key to managing appointments as efficiently as possible across outpatients. Staff can see immediately which patients have arrived, who has not checked-in, if a patient is in the appropriate waiting room, when they have been called forward to see the clinician, and when they have finished their appointment.
“We are delighted to be working alongside the East Surrey team on this project and look forward to working closely alongside them to deliver their ongoing digital transformation of outpatients.”
More on Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust
Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust was formed on 1 April 1998 following a merger between East Surrey Healthcare NHS and Crawley Horsham NHS Trusts.
At East Surrey Hospital, Redhill has 697 beds and provide acute and complex services. In addition, the Trust provides a range of outpatient, diagnostic and less complex planned services at The Earlswood Centre, Caterham Dene Hospital and Oxted Health Centre in Surrey, and at Crawley and Horsham Hospitals in West Sussex.
SASH is a major local employer, with a diverse workforce of over 4,000 providing healthcare services to a growing population of around 535,000.
