Helping University Hospitals Derby and Burton through COVID and beyond with MediCall Patient Paging.
University Hospitals of Derby and Burton (UHDB) NHS Foundation Trust is one of the largest NHS trusts in the country, operating 5 hospitals across Staffordshire and South Derbyshire, employing over 12,000 staff and serving a population of more than one million.
With significant demand on their imaging and maternity departments both before and during the pandemic, the Trust was looking to ease congestion in waiting areas to improve social distancing.
The COVID challenge
As part of the trust’s operational response to COVID-19, there was a ban on unnecessary visits to imaging departments.
Along with social distancing restrictions, this made getting patients in for appointments challenging. Waiting rooms could not be used, and partners were not able to attend appointments with patients.
The Trust approached Call Systems Technology (CST) to discuss patient paging solutions - giving us the challenge of designing and implementing a system that would offer the range they needed to allow patients to wait and be called for their appointment both inside and outside of the hospital building.
Improving the patient experience
Patient flow and experience has vastly improved as a result of deploying the MediCall system. In maternity, women can bring support persons to their scans while social distancing is maintained, which has been vitally important for patients and their support needs.
As only persons entering the scan rooms or clinics are invited in when their buzzer sounds, footfall has been greatly reduced in reception and waiting areas of the relevant departments, which has been crucial for infection control.
Extending the range of the buzzers has enabled better control over waiting room occupancy during delays while reducing the risk of any further delays.
Patients and their support partners can wait outside but return promptly for their appointment using the pagers without staff having to go and locate them.
Without the buzzers, appointment times would need to be extended further, impacting scan capacity and resulting in some patients missing out.
MediCallTM
Improve patient experience
Reduce crowded waiting areas
Ergonomic design for safety hygiene
Durable with extensive range
Fast installation. Simple to use
Paging: Flexibility & Safety
UHDB NHS Trust worked with CST to deploy 5 of our MediCall Patient Paging systems at Queen’s Hospital in Burton and Royal Derby, and to implement single systems at 6 smaller Derbyshire Community Hospitals.
Each system consists of 30 pagers (buzzers), giving ample capacity to manage patient flow throughout the day. Repeater boosters were also installed to gain extra coverage for car parks, coffee shops and other potential waiting areas across the site.
On arrival in the relevant department for their appointment, patients are given a buzzer and advised to go and wait elsewhere – for example in their car, outside, or in the coffee shop. Patients have embraced the system in the knowledge they have the freedom to wait safely whilst ensuring they will not miss their appointment.
Looking to the future
Although many of the previous government mandates and restrictions have now been lifted, it’s still vitally important for many patients to maintain social distancing. Not all pregnant women are or can be vaccinated - so maintaining this system in maternity and antenatal is of particular importance.
"The patient buzzers used in antenatal ultrasound at both our main sites have been invaluable.
They’ve ensured that we’ve been able to maintain as normal service as possible, helping us to control waiting room occupancy and allowing women to bring support persons into scans.
The swiftness of CST and the team’s responsiveness to queries, deliveries and installation have enabled the Imaging department to implement the use of the pagers very quickly and therefore aided in us continuing providing an agile and responsive service, throughout COVID and beyond."
Lisa-Jane Dowson, General Manager of the Imaging Business Unit
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