Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust has shared learnings and outcomes from its £21.1 million Time to Care project, citing “substantial progress” in delivering a new engagement-led operating model along with “meaningful cultural change” across services.
Key achievements, the trust notes, include establishing a new operating model in inpatient and urgent care services built around purposeful admission, therapeutic care, trauma-informed care, and safe and effective discharge; embedding co-production with the help of lived experience ambassadors; and the successful recruitment of 333.7 WTE roles to strengthen inpatient MDT team capacity and introduce new roles such as peer support workers and activity coordinators.
The project set out with a number of process improvement aims each designed to help save “time to care”. Examples cover the roll-out of the SMART v2 bed management system, expected to save around 57 hours per week by updating SMART ahead of SitRep, and a further 7.5 hours per week through a decrease in information requests sent via email. The trust also reportedly aimed to explore opportunities to optimise documentation processes between Paris and Mobius, with hopes of releasing 2-3 hours per day, and reducing the number of documents scanned by 25 percent.
Providing staff with access to the shared care record was hoped to result in decreasing non-value added time for pharmacy teams by around 2-3 hours, the trust continues. The development of a dashboard offering visibility over recruitment and staffing information was expected to save “at least 10 hours” in time spent producing performance reports, and to reduce time spent accessing data from multiple sources to find out ward staffing levels.
The trust highlights lessons learned over the course of the project. It reflects on the fact that funding was not included in the business case for “essential” IT requirements such as laptops and software licenses, resulting in unplanned expenditure. Comprehensive planning and early engagement with digital or IT teams is a key mitigation, it suggests, as is fully scoping digital requirements for hardware, software, and licensing to be included in the initial business case.
Also noted is the effective collaboration of transformation leads throughout the programme’s duration, with consistent support offered to operational services, issues troubleshooted proactively, and integrated working relationships fostered across teams. The trust similarly picks up on “a strong collaborative culture” which contributed to effective service delivery.
“Future transformation programmes should adopt a similar collaborative leadership model, ensuring that transformation leads work closely to build cohesive, high-performing teams,” it states. “Future programmes should seek to replicate the collaborative and multi-disciplinary approach as this has worked well in areas.”
Wider trend: Releasing time to care with emerging technologies
The board of North London NHS Foundation Trust has shared details of work to improve efficiency, reduce running costs, and eliminate non-value adding tasks with the use of digital tools and AI. Mobilising AI solutions to free-up time to care through a ten percent reduction in time spent on non-clinical activities year-on-year is noted, as is increasing the use of digital skills by upskilling the workforce to reduce time spent on non-value adding tasks by five percent year-on-year.
Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust is to launch the next phase of its AI collaboration with Microsoft, looking to increase access for colleagues to Copilot and establish an MFT “Agent Factory” to support teams in designing and implementing AI tools to automate routine operational tasks. The trust has already rolled out Dragon Copilot Ambient Voice Technology and 1,500 Microsoft 365 Copilot licences across a range of roles. Over the next three years, an additional 6,500 Copilot licences will be granted to MFT per year, reportedly enabling access for all corporate staff, and 1,600 frontline colleagues. Alongside this, the trust plans to invest in training and development to promote colleague confidence in the use of AI.
Airedale NHS Foundation Trust is using robotic process automation to support the prostate cancer pathway, sending a text to patients due to come in for blood tests and then updating them with results via text, removing the need for a clinical appointment. RPA identifies from waiting lists when patients are due to come in for a PSA test, taking into account differing follow-up times depending on factors such as whether they have had surgery or radiotherapy. According to the trust, the automation is also capable of identifying when a result is within normal range for each individual person, sending them a text message with results within 24 hours.
