REDUCE EMERGENCY ROOM LENGTH-OFSTAY BY 17% WITH BETTER PATIENT FLOW!
ABOUT LHSC
London Health
Sciences Centre
(LHSC) is one of
Canada’s largest
acute care teaching
hospitals. With over
10,000 employees
and 866 beds across
three sites, hospital
administration needed new ways to improve
discharge planning and patient flow
while staying within budget. In particular,
the lack of acute-care beds and delays
scheduling surgery and patient transfers
between facilities refl ected the complex
challenges of timely communication and
coordinating patient fl ow between three
facilities.
BEFORE CONNEXALL
Before implementing Connexall, LHSC staff
depended on a complex process involving
15 steps and 7 people to transfer patients
between facilities. Staff were often unavailable
and communication details depended
on the individual relaying these accurately.
“Connexall is an amazing, continually
innovative product
that can connect any input to
any desired output. “
- Bill Burley
Patient Equipment Technician
Biomedical Engineering
London Health Sciences Centre
Bed management was also challenging and
the long communication process required
for patient fl ow meant that beds were not
always available when needed. This also
meant that ambulances were used to hold
patients while staff waited for a bed to become available.
THE CONNEXALL SOLUTION
LHSC worked closely with the Connexall
team to identify the challenges and opportunities
to optimize patient fl ow and improve
communication, especially in regards
to patient transfers and bed management.
The status of hospital beds - available,
being turned over, occupied - across
LHSC’s three sites is visible to staff in the
Emergency Room. Porters and support
staff receive information like patient room
and bed number, and any relevant transfer precaustions. Connexall is currently working on a
project with LHSC to integrate Cerner bed management
software so that with a simple double-click on
an icon of an empty bed, the ER notifi es the unit that
a patient is en route.
As inpatients are discharged from units, notifi cation is
sent to housekeeping, so that they can turnover the
bed. The notifi cation process has been customized by
LHSC so that half an hour later, the Bed Management
Clerk is notifi ed of the discharge, and can update the
system to indicate that the bed is available to take a
patient again. This information is updated in real time
on the monitors in the ER, so staff are always aware of
where they can send ER patients waiting for an inpatient
bed.
As a result, patient fl ow has become streamlined and
staff have better communication…while leveraging
existing technology and clinical systems applications!
The patient transfer process is now automated with
Connexall; transfer staff and porters receive instant
notifi cation and a streamlined acknowledgement
process over their wireless phones - eliminating the
potential for missed communication or manual callbacks.
LHSC had146,696 Emergency visits last year. Connexall
helped to reduce the average length of stay for patients -
it decreased 17% - from 5.4hrs to 4.5hrs
CONNEXALL DELIVERS: RESULTS SUMMARY
Transforming work and patient fl ow, LHSC improved
patient and staff safety with multiple benefi ts. After
the project was completed, the staff were able to:
• Reduce median admission time by three hours
• Reduce the amount of patients leaving without
being seen from 5% to 2%
• Reduce the average length of stay for all ER patients
by 17% - from 5.4hrs to 4.5hrs
• Decrease patient length of stay in ED
• Expedite patient transfers
• Use nursing time more effi ciently
• Connexall tracks notifi cation and confi rmation to
produce legible and consistent documentation of
patient information such as wait times and communication
acknowledgement
• Share clinical information in near-time
• Leverage existing technology and clinical systems
applications
• Assist with the beginnings of nursing practice
transformation within the ER
“Connexall is extremely fl exible, allowing
for ease-of-use for the end user as
each template can be programmed for
specifi c units. The reporting suit is also
quite functional, off ering detailed information
on call points, devices and delivery;
this is very useful for tracking issues
or just keeping a fi nger on the pulse of
the hospital. “
- Bill Burley
Patient Equipment Technician
Biomedical Engineering
London Health Sciences Centre
