{"id":5436,"date":"2019-01-22T02:03:00","date_gmt":"2019-01-22T02:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/a6f61c8390.nxcli.io\/news\/richard-smith-bed-management-in-hospitals-horrible-and-badly-in-need-of-reform\/"},"modified":"2019-01-22T02:03:00","modified_gmt":"2019-01-22T02:03:00","slug":"richard-smith-bed-management-in-hospitals-horrible-and-badly-in-need-of-reform","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/a6f61c8390.nxcli.io\/en-gb\/news\/richard-smith-bed-management-in-hospitals-horrible-and-badly-in-need-of-reform\/","title":{"rendered":"Richard Smith: Bed management in hospitals\u2014horrible and badly in need of reform"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This article originally appeared on BMJ Blogs | Richard Smith<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The British public is used to operations being cancelled and to whole hospitals being unable to admit more patients because no beds are available. A recent television programme showed how a large team was assembled over weeks at St Mary\u2019s Hospital London to perform a particularly complex operation only for the operation to be cancelled at the last minute because of the lack of an intensive care bed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSenior nurses spend too much of their time chasing beds,\u201d said Clare Panniker, chief executive of Mid-Essex, Southend, and Basildon Hospitals Group (MSB Group), at a recent meeting of the Cambridge Health Network that discussed improving bed management in hospitals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Multiple factors determine whether beds are available, said Neil Griffiths, who worked for two decades as an NHS manager and is now managing director of TeleTracking<\/a>, a company that is using technology to enable better bed management in hospitals<\/a>. Most hospitals in the NHS use bed managers to try and manage bed availability. They meet four to five times a day, but despite their best efforts elective admissions are cancelled, patients suffer (including increased mortality), staff burnout, and staff sickness rates are high. \u201cThe bed management process in hospitals is debilitating,\u201d said Panniker; \u201cit\u2019s not sustainable,\u201d said Griffiths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Patient admissions and discharges are not that out of kilter in actual daily number, in the MSB Group, said Panniker, but they are out of kilter in time of the day. A few hours\u2019 improvement in the delivery of a bed can make all the difference. So the need is not for more beds but for better management of flow. There is no simple solution, said Griffiths, rather hospitals need a \u201creset\u201d and an examination of the root causes of the problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One thing that is probably essential for making a difference is real time data on bed availability. \u201cWe don\u2019t know what\u2019s going on in real time in our hospitals,\u201d said Panniker. The next move, said Griffiths, is to set up a command centre\u2014preferably outside the hospital. Setting command centres up outside hospital makes people feel uncomfortable but is usually a worthwhile step. TeleTracking works with half of the acute beds in hospitals in the US, where most of the hospitals have command centres<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The MSB Group, which is working with TeleTracking, has very recently set up a command centre outside of the three hospitals; Panniker had visited the centre the afternoon of the meeting and found it remarkably calm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Read the full story now<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","categories":[],"tags":[],"newstype":[255],"keyword":[],"class_list":["post-5436","news","type-news","status-publish","hentry","newstype-in-the-news"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nRichard Smith: Bed management in hospitals\u2014horrible and badly in need of reform - Teletracking<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Richard Smith discusses the need for improved bed management in hospitals across the UK, in order to improve care for patients.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Richard Smith: Bed management in hospitals\u2014horrible and badly in need of reform - Teletracking\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Richard Smith discusses the need for improved bed management in hospitals across the UK, in order to improve care for patients.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/a6f61c8390.nxcli.io\/en-gb\/news\/richard-smith-bed-management-in-hospitals-horrible-and-badly-in-need-of-reform\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Teletracking\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/a6f61c8390.nxcli.io\\\/en-gb\\\/news\\\/richard-smith-bed-management-in-hospitals-horrible-and-badly-in-need-of-reform\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/a6f61c8390.nxcli.io\\\/en-gb\\\/news\\\/richard-smith-bed-management-in-hospitals-horrible-and-badly-in-need-of-reform\\\/\",\"name\":\"Richard Smith: Bed management in hospitals\u2014horrible and badly in need of reform - 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