Interview with Colin Fell - Radiology Business Manager
East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust were facing extremely high demand for its services with annual growth for some modalities exceeding 30%.
We needed to extend the existing working hours to cope with this demand to 7 days per week. The new core working hours are Monday to Friday 8am-8pm and Saturday / Sunday and bank holidays 8am to 4pm. Radiological on site support is also provided 12 hours per day, 7 days per week. This ensured clinicians had better access to routine radiological opinion and the radiologist could improve their turnaround times for reports. The changes delivered improved waiting times, reduced length of stay and better equipment utilisation. In addition to significant cost improvements with both increased revenue income and cost savings, all this was possible by negotiating with staff under agenda for change terms and conditions.
It was decided to look for an "out of hours" service that would deliver efficiently whilst also bringing efficiency savings to the department. This type of service would also create additional resources to support the out of hours service and allow us to focus on meeting our local standards of 7 days for cancer pathway patients and no longer than 27 days for routine examinations.
We selected the services of 4 Ways Healthcare because of the rigour the company applies to audit, governance and compliance. 4 Ways was already supplying services to two other local Trusts in the area and was able to set up the necessary infrastructure to all three EKHUF Trust sites over the N3 network within only two days. We were extremely pleased with the fast implementation process and the way that 4 Ways managed the communications throughout.
We are aware that 4 Ways' audit programme is robust but we have also monitored their performance against our own audit. We have found that 4 ways is performing very well and their performance against all Key Performance indicators is excellent. In Particular, at East Kent we require reports on emergency CT examinations to be fed back to clinicians verbally within 30 minutes and a written report within an hour.
4 Ways is exceeding our requirements and delivering 85-90% of both verbal and written reports within 30 minutes.
4 Ways have helped us improve our efficiency in delivering timely results to patients 24 hours a day whilst achieving our 5% savings target. Written reports are available overnight within an hour of a CT being undertaken. We calculated a 90 day reduction in length of stay per month following the implementation of our extended hour's service.
When visiting the 4 Ways office we were impressed with their internal monitoring of patients within their system. Each patient is tracked against their key performance indicators for that specific Trust. So 4 Ways PACS managers can escalate any delays and ensure a timely service to the end user. It is this attention to detail that has given us a great deal of confidence in them as a company.
In summary we are very happy with the service provided by 4 Ways. We have found that everyone in their team is easy to talk to and they are willing to work with you to resolve any issues promptly. As a result of working with 4 Ways we are confident that we are able to provide a high-quality and cost-effective reporting solution to the Trust whilst giving fast high-quality care to our patients.