Supporting Wrightington Wigan and Leigh’s Elective Recovery Programme
Intouch with Health has been chosen to support Wrightington Wigan and Leigh Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust with its Elective Recovery Programme and the digital transformation of its Outpatient department.
Through a multi-year licensing agreement, Intouch with Health will implement a series of digital patient flow management solutions across the Trust to help keep patients and staff safe and informed with access to live data.
Wrightington Wigan and Leigh Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is responsible for a host of specialist care services on a regional, national, and international basis, providing a broad array of services across its various sites, ranging from accident and emergency care to chronic disease management, specialist cancer and surgical specialties, as well as providing care across its community clinics. Additionally, the Trust directly serves a local population of 326,000 across the Northwest of England. The Trust comprises three main hospital sites, Royal Albert Edward Infirmary, Wrightington Hospital, and Leigh Infirmary, and thirty-three clinics.
“As we emerge from the latest wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, our attention is focusing on an Elective Recovery Programme.”
At the core of this digital transformation project is Intouch’s Flow Manager solution, a central digital dashboard accessed by staff across the Outpatient department which will allow teams to monitor the location and status of each visiting patient in the department throughout the duration of their appointment. Staff will be able to quickly see which patients have arrived, which have not checked-in, if each patient is in the appropriate waiting room, if they have been called to see the clinician and when they have finished seeing the clinician – all from one central dashboard. From this dashboard, staff will also be able to monitor patient numbers in various waiting rooms as part of a capacity management feature which supports the Trust’s ongoing social distancing and infection prevention measures.
Other solutions including Intouch’s Mobile Appointment Manager app will ensure patients can safely check-in for their appointments without needing to enter a building. When in close proximity to the hospital’s building, patients can check-in using the app and remain outside until they are called forward for their appointment through the app. As a result, patient numbers inside waiting rooms can be reduced.
“We are implementing the Intouch Flow Manager and Mobile Appointment Manager systems to help keep patients informed and allow them to arrive and be called to their appointments remotely. ”
Staff at the Trust will also benefit from Intouch’s Room & Resource Manager solution, which allows staff to book and manage the capacity of available rooms across the Outpatient departments, supporting the Trust to maximise room usage and resources as they tackle the backlog of appointments caused by Covid-19.
Commenting ahead of deployment of these solutions, Martyn Smith, Associate Director of IM&T at the Trust said:
“As we emerge from the latest wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, our attention is focusing on an Elective Recovery Programme. As we increase activity in our hospitals, we need to employ ways to continue to keep our patients and our staff safe.
“In response to this we are implementing the Intouch Flow Manager and Mobile Appointment Manager systems to help keep patients informed and allow them to arrive and be called to their appointments remotely. This allows patients to remain socially distanced upon arrival at hospital rather than having to enter waiting rooms. These solutions will also provide our services with real-time information about patient attendances supporting improved flow.”
