Somerset NHS Foundation Trust moves away from paper and pagers

Somerset NHS Foundation Trust has gone live with a digital task management solution from Infinity Health in a bid to phase out paper and pagers.

The Global Digital Exemplar (GDE) has rolled out the solution at Musgrove Park Hospital’s out of hours team, covering adult medical and surgical in-patient wards.

Ward staff can phone requests through to a coordinator who can log the request on to Infinity’s digital to-do list. The out of hours team is then able to log in and see what tasks have been allocated to them and the location.

Moving away from paper and pagers should cut the time spent responding to bleeps and make out of hours care more efficient.

Dr Luke Gompels, chief clinical information officer at the trust, said: “Working with Infinity Health has helped us to improve how patient related tasks can be allocated, accepted, and tracked at the touch of a button. This has reduced interruptions from bleeps, releasing time back to doctors, and contributing to a safer, less stressful working environment during the night.”

Bleeps are recognised as being inefficient, disruptive to workflow and causing interruptions to patient care. With the Infinity system, staff can easily respond to their allocated tasks, eliminating the need to respond to a bleep. In addition, because tasks can be marked as ‘accepted’, ‘in progress’ or ‘complete’ in real time, ward staff are able to see the status of tasks and don’t need to waste time chasing colleagues.

Dr Gompels continued: “Senior colleagues at the trust are able to gain a better understanding of what’s happening across the hospital, meaning they can more effectively support our junior doctors with team working and ensuring they have more time to take breaks.”

Elliott Engers, CEO at Infinity Health, added: “Out of hours teams are always under intense pressure, having to balance multiple priorities and make split-second decisions in a skeleton team covering huge numbers of patients. It is therefore absolutely critical that they have the best tools to coordinate and prioritise care in the safest and most efficient way. This project provides exactly that, at a time where the NHS is under an enormous amount of pressure due to Covid-19.”