Bispebjerg Hospital laboratory and logistic building

    Improved patient service at Bispebjerg Hospital

     

    A focus on change management combined with Systematic's Columna Flow Task Management system has resulted in a strategic selection of service tasks, which provides better opportunities for involvement with the patients. 

     

    Challenge

    • Telephoning creates bottlenecks in communication
    • Bad overview of orderlies and their location
    • Fewer steps between tasks
     

    Solution

    • A user-friendly and intuitive system
    • Overview of own and colleagues’ tasks
    • Fewer steps and less time spent per task 
     

    Benefits

    • Optimised workflow
    • Increased patient safety
    • Increased independence in the work of orderlies

    Limited overview increases waiting times and reduces patient service

    Many hospitals have the potential of making the coordination and execution of the porters’ tasks more efficient. Often, the responsible for distributing the service tasks of the hospital is the dispatcher. Their primary method of contact is through telephone. This means that bottlenecks occur in relation to booking and distribution of service tasks, which results in an inefficient workflow and increased waiting time.

    Previously, Bispebjerg Hospital has also experienced problems in connection with the distribution of tasks and there has been a limited overview of porters and their tasks. The  consequence of this is a lot of steps between tasks, where a porter has returned from a task empty-handed or has had to walk back to the department to get the next task. The inefficiency has increased the waiting time and made patient service less effective.

    To strengthen the coordination and execution of service tasks, Bispebjerg Hospital has chosen to invest in Systematic’s Columna Flow Task Management solution. During the process, the hospital’s focus has been on involving the employees to examine how the daily work of porters can be made more efficient in order to increase patient safety.

    Strengthened coordination and efficient service logistics

    The Task Management system is one of four components, which make up Columna Flow. With the system, hospitals get the overview needed to optimise and make the service field more efficient. The solution gives users the opportunity to see where staff, equipment and tasks are located, and what the statuses of the various tasks are. In this way, the individual task can be solved by the nearest porter. Resulting in tasks being carried out faster and service staff walking fewer steps per task. Thereby, healthcare staff will not have to contact the porter or dispatcher for an update, meaning fewer interruptions and less time wasted.

    Overall, a higher level of transparency and documentation of service tasks is reached, which contributes to an improvement of quality in logistics, delivery safety, and optimisation of the service department.

    Changes in workflow

    At Bispebjerg Hospital, the Columna Flow Task Management system has contributed to a change of culture. Here, the porters experience a high level of independence as well as faster and more flexible help from colleagues. This gives the porters a better opportunity for engaging with patients during e.g. transport, as they are not interrupted along the way.

    The porters at Bispebjerg Hospital are divided into groups that take tasks from the same task pool. Thereby, the porters  can easily help each other. When porters are away from the department, they can take on tasks throughout the entire hospital based on the subsidiarity principle and via a feature showing the nearest tasks. Thus, porters are no longer limited to a small section of the hospital and during peak times, they can join other work groups.

    Through the open structure in the Columna Flow solution, the porters are able to work across both functions and tasks. The hospital employees ordering porter tasks, no longer have to book tasks via the telephone. Instead the tasks are sent directly to all relevant porters and not just the local one. Furthermore, the Columna Flow Task Management solution and its new and systemised tasking have resulted in a change of the workflow for porters at Bispebjerg Hospital. 

    Efficient everyday life

    Because of the change of culture, the task bookers are experiencing a more efficient task flow, since more porters have the opportunity to take any given task. This contributes to a better follow-up as the booker now receives a status on the task. One of the porters expresses:

    “It is nice to be able to let the task go when it has been booked and then pay full attention to the next patient – and I know who takes care of the task.”

    An intuitive user-interface has made the booking procedure simpler for the people booking the tasks and at the same time, the task and status overview gives a better overview during handover between the porters at the hospital.

    The porters are experiencing a higher level of calmness as they are not meeting the same level of interruptions during their work. Now, the individual porter can contribute to the task flow by setting up tasks themselves. The Columna Flow Task Management system includes a tool for documenting the porters’ daily work, which helps visualising workloads and bottlenecks, resulting in optimised work planning at the hospital. This has made it easier for the staff at Bispebjerg Hospital to improve the work planning so that the number of porters match the capacity demand.

    However, the Columna Flow solution benefits more than the service staff. In the end, patients experience a higher level of service and safety, since strengthened coordination and planning leads to porters being able to provide a more patient focused service.