1st August saw a successful go-live of a vital new service supporting the delivery of critical care to sick neonates, children and adults in the East Midlands and beyond. The national ECMO service, critical neonatal care and critical paediatric care services look after the most vulnerable and sick babies, children and adults across the East Midlands and nationally. The efficient and safe transport of these patients from their local hospital to the specialist centre that can best care for them depends upon effective real-time communication across multiple teams, specialists and their transport teams.
365 Response has been commissioned by NHS England Specialised Commissioning (East Midlands) to deliver the 24/7/365 response service which connects clinicians looking after these very sick patients to the expert regional clinical teams that are able to advise or take over their care. Incoming calls from consultants across the region are speedily connected to the right experts who may be located anywhere or even mobile allowing real-time multi-party conferencing and decision-making. Transport teams are included so that where a transfer of care is required there is no additional delay.
The service is delivered by the highly trained 365 Specialist Call Handling Team, based In Leicester, and is underpinned by a digital communications platform and case management system created by 365 Response and built on their 365 Smart Platform. Full case management, review, audit and call recording is all available securely in the cloud-hosted platform on demand.
Gail Faulkner, Lead Nurse & ECMO Co-ordinator, University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust commented: ‘It has been a pleasure working with the 365 Response team. They have taken care to study our requirements in detail and have spent a lot of time with our staff and clinicians in designing a solution to fit our needs. We have now gone live with the service and I am pleased to report a smooth transition. We are looking forward to working further with 365 Response to realise more of our ideas for improvement and further developments to our service.’
Dr Chris Jones, 365 Response Chief Technology Officer, added ‘365 Response is delighted to have been awarded this important contract. We are dedicated to enabling health services to improve the outcomes of their patients through digital solutions and transport innovation. The Specialist Call Handing Team is a vital part of the efficient movement of some of our most vulnerable citizens into centres of excellence such as the world-class units in Leicester & Nottingham hospitals. It has been an honour over the last few months working with the clinical teams to understand their needs and configure the 365 Smart Platform for them. We have delivered an integrated digital communications platform that seamlessly and securely allows operators to carry out call handing and case management and more all within a single system. We are excited to be already working with the team on innovations to further improve their service and improve how referrers across the country can access their expertise’.
Jude Bowler, Senior Service Specialist, NHS England & NHS Improvement said:NHS England/Improvement would like to thank 365 Response for the development and implementation of the new call handling service for the specialised transport teams in the East Midlands region. 365 Response have taken a great deal of time to understand the service providers requirements to develop the service. The go-live on the 1st August 2019 went smoothly and we look forward to seeing the service continue to support the delivery of specialised critical care transport teams in the East Midlands region.