NS improves care by deploying Command Centres

BY NORM TOLLINSKY

The Nova Scotia Health Authority is implementing GE Healthcare’s Command Centre Software Platform at the Queen Elizabeth II Health Sciences Centre (QEII) and hospitals across the province. The technology will provide healthcare administrators and clinicians with a real-time view of capacity utilization, problem spots, and opportunities for process improvements.

The NSHA is the second healthcare organization in Canada to deploy the GE solution and the first to do so province wide. Humber River Hospital in Toronto was an early adopter, acquiring the software in 2017. Providence Health Care in Vancouver is now beginning its implementation for St. Paul’s Hospital, Mount Saint Joseph Hospital and Holy Family Hospital.

Work on the phased deployment in Nova Scotia started in January 2022 and by June, the system was live with the first of six “tiles”, the Capacity Expediter, at QEII. Capacity Expediter is a web-based app that provides automated, real-time visibility to the current and near-term status of beds.

Staff and clinicians can gain a picture of bed capacity and patient flow with just three mouse clicks.

It considers not only patients in beds, but also patients assigned a bed and waiting for them, patients unassigned but needing a bed, outbound transfers, confirmed discharges, and beds blocked for maintenance, staffing, infection control or other reasons.

“We now have an up-to-date, 10,000-foot view of true bed capacity across the QEII Halifax Infirmary and Victoria General campuses and the ability to drill down into specific facilities, programs or individual patient care unit, with just three mouse clicks, saving staff several hours per day manually gathering this information and preparing reports,” said Gord Peckham, who served as Senior Director, C3 Operations during the initial year of the program.

With the foundation in place, three more CCSP components were deployed for QEII: Patient Manager, Boarders Expediter and Inbound Transfers.

These Apps help inpatient unit teams, allied health, medical imaging and C3 expediter staff stay in sync by providing awareness about which patients are where, key dates such as expected discharge date and

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