Authors (including presenting author) :
Tsang WL(1), Wong WK(1), Cheung TP(2), Kwok MT(3), Chan CM(3), Lau NH(1), Wong YY(1), Hui YK(1), Kong CY(3), Wong KY(1), Tam S(4), Tang SK(2)
Affiliation :
(1) Department of Surgery, United Christian Hospital, (2) Nursing Services Division, United Christian Hospital, (3) Department of Orthopedics and Traumatology, United Christian Hospital, (4) Department of Planning and Commissioning, United Christian Hospital
Introduction :
High surgical bed occupancy levels often result in heightened staff stress and admission access block. This is in part attributable to delayed patient flow. To avoid downstream bed utilization, a cloud-based bed capacity management system is developed to substitute the original paper-based records and to articulate the implementation of Capacity Command Centre.
Objectives :
To streamline workflow and minimize labor intensive tasks through digital transformation of work aiming to (1) increase operational efficiency, (2) reduce cost, and (3) enhance patients’ experience.
Methodology :
A cloud-based Electronic Capacity Management Suite (ECMS) is developed in order to facilitate daily surgical ward operation in terms of bed management. This cloud-based architecture utilizes spreadsheet formula, Google Apps Scripts and the unique built-in features to manipulate surgical bed statistics, ensure effective and secure information sharing and collaborations among users at anytime and anywhere, and remove frictions of working with multiple data sources. Responsible persons of each surgical ward at each work shift simply need to enter few data into the ECMS. After this simple data entry, the overview of bed capacity of each surgical ward and the whole department will be generated and shared at real time. A user acceptance test (UAT) was held between October 10, 2022 and October 14, 2022. Relevant modifications were made and a pilot run in all surgical wards was launched on November 11, 2022. System evaluation was held from December 26, 2022 to December 30, 2022. Full implementation was endorsed on December 31, 2022.
Result & Outcome :
A total of 60 replies were received during the evaluation phase. 86.7% reported the call volume related to bed statistics among all surgical wards were significantly reduced. 100% reported to have saved their time when using ECMS to report and obtain bed statistics of other surgical wards. 61.7% reported to have saved more than 20 minutes. Other encouraging comments include “the nursing world needs to be changed” and “a smart solution to facilitate ward operation”. With the implementation of ECMS, the original way of information sharing related to surgical bed capacity have been revamped. Frequent checking on bed statistics on CMS, manual calculations and tremendous phone calls are no longer needed. Assessments and planning on surgical bed capacity, communications with other clinical departments and surgical manpower deployment have become more efficient and accurate.
