ExtraMed Patient Flow for Portering Teams

Porters have to respond to multiple requests to move patients at all times of the day and night. They come from different parts of the hospital and most are urgent or time-sensitive.

Real-time visibility of requests for portering services is essential. ExtraMed has evolved and integrated its patient flow for portering teams.

ExtraMed Patient Flow has been has worked with its customers to evolve their patient flow so that it integrates effectively with portering teams. In many hospitals, requests are made by phone call, bleeps or even physical visits to wards. Information about the request might be recorded on handwritten notes in patients’ paper records or maybe a spreadsheet. If this is the case, not only is valuable staff time being used, it means there is no visibility of priority, current tasks or upcoming demand.

Real-time visibility of patients that need to be moved

The Mobile Medic solution in ExtraMed Patient Flow captures and presents all portering requests in a single real-time view. It means that workload can be shared more effectively, saving both time and resources moving patients around the hospital. Finding an available porter and getting visibility of the overall number of required patient moves is inaccurate and time-consuming using manual or standalone recording. It makes it hard to access and hard to manage and allocate jobs to the most appropriate person.

ExtraMed Mobile Medic Solution includes a team patient list view where all porter requests are shown, the current status of the request and who it has been allocated to, and a smartphone application for task management meaning that porters can receive a job request wherever they are in the hospital and update the current status.

Ultimately, it helps to save time, optimise your use of resources and improves the quality of care for patients, reducing the chance of request being missed or over allocated.

Key features for portering teams

• Raise Request: Enables nurses to raise a request for a porter from within ExtraMed. Each request type can have its own set of reasons and priorities
• Request Allocation: Supports a coordinator in assigning the requests from multiple devices to the available porters – and reassigning as required
• Request Management: Each porter can manage their availability and the requests that have been assigned to them through a smartphone
• Request Status: Coordinator view of all requests raised including those that have breached, are assigned or unassigned with the status of each request
• Request Escalation: Requests can be escalated by either the ward staff or by a coordinator
• Porter Availability: Team members can advise on their own availability, so tasks are not sent to anyone who is unavailable
• Operational Insight: Real-time view of available porters and where they are