NHS Tayside partners with Catalyst BI to deliver exceptional patient care through pioneering data transformation

NHS Tayside and Catalyst BI have come together to deliver a pioneering integrated hub for service capacity across the Health Board, resulting in the delivery of exceptional patient care.

The Athena Command Centre, software built and implemented by Catalyst BI, has transformed NHS Tayside into a data-driven Health Board that can predict and plan patient flow using evidence-based data. Predictive modelling enables the identification of patients at risk of requiring admission and becoming delayed, with Command Centre screens being viewable and available at all times via off-site secure access.

The Command Centre, which uses advanced analytic predictions for up to a week in advance, has enabled NHS Tayside to not only improve patient pathways and staffing and service capacity, but to also anticipate probable increases in service demand. The Health Board can therefore plan accordingly, being proactive rather than reactive and making the necessary provisions to manage patient needs across the hospital footprint.

Professor Grant Archibald, Chief Executive at NHS Tayside said:

“Importantly we do not only want to know where we had been so far in the day, nor where we are at, at any particular moment, but to have the facility to predict what the rest of the working day would look like in respect of demand and capacity. This enables change actions which anticipate, and so provide for, challenges in the patient flow, demand/ capacity profile.”

Not only does the Command Centre reduce administration time, it provides the flexibility to meet urgent demands efficiently; it has the capability to utilise escalation triggers across patient pathways. Real-time task overviews enable accurate and timely decisions to be made, thus positively impacting patient care and the management of the Health Board.

Jenni Woods, Health & Business Intelligence Lead at NHS Tayside (HBI Team) said:

“We now have the ability to view everything in one place, one source of information on current hospital status with visible alerts to any potential or current flow issues.  This has helped support the transformation of NHS Tayside in to a data-driven organisation that uses evidence-based data to understand and support our patient flow.”

Measurable outcomes provided by the Command Centre include reductions in emergency department waiting times, bed boarding and delayed discharges, as well as an increase in morning discharges. This bottleneck visibility has enabled the Health Board to deliver better experiences for both patients and NHS staff.

And looking forward, NHS Tayside and Catalyst BI certainly aren’t stopping there. The duo are working collectively to make the Command Centre accessible securely via mobile device, as well as creating a Planned Care dashboard, which will provide additional insights to enable further efficiencies in service delivery.