Case Study: Medical Services make life easier for renal dialysis patients
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The thousands of patients needing renal dialysis in Britain rely on the commitment and skills of transport services to get them safely to hospital and home again after their treatment.
Medical Services is a leader in this specialised field completing more than 250,000 rental patient journeys each year for many major NHS and private hospitals, including Ealing Hospital, Northwick Park Hospital, St Charles Hospital, West Middlesex University Hospital, Central Middlesex Hospital, Hayes Dialysis Unit, Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, Morriston Hospital Swansea, Lister Hospital Stevenage, Watford General Hospital, St Albans Hospital and Luton & Dunstable Hospital We understand the overall function of Renal Dialysis Units and the needs of patients in terms of Patient Transport. Patients are usually on dialysis machines for 4-6 hours 3 times per week – Monday Wednesday Friday or Tuesday Thursday Saturday. In our experience there are usually 3 daily dialysis sessions, morning, mid shift and twilight shift. Patients finishing twilight shifts can finish as late as 11pm and still need to have transport home. The long hours spent on dialysis can be exhausting for patients and it is therefore imperative that transport is timely and flexible. We further understand that patients need to meet their allotted times (if they don’t they may well have further delays waiting for an additional slot at the dialysis unit) and can be stressed or anxious if transport is late picking them up from their homes. It is just as important not to arrive too early to pick up a patient because if they arrive too early at the dialysis unit, then they will be kept waiting unnecessarily until their allotted time. Patients need to be collected promptly after their treatment as they can often feel sick and weak and wish to get home as soon as possible. The time spent on a vehicle is another consideration and dialysis patients need to be picked up and escorted to their respective units within a reasonable time frame because of the long hours associated with their treatment. Routes need to be efficiently planned to take into account the needs of the patients and to reduce potential delays. To this end Medical Services refers to the guidelines set out by the Cheshire and Merseyside Renal Transport Action Learning Set – Recommendations for the provision of a patient centred renal transport service. Many of our procedures and key performance indicators mirror the guidelines of this excellent document.
Hammersmith Hospitals NHS Trust The latest to be added to the list were the renal dialysis patients at Hammersmith Hospital, Charing Cross Hospital and satellite units across the whole of West London. This service was a major part of the patient transport contract awarded to Medical Services recently by Hammersmith Hospitals NHS Trust The company’s knowledge, experience and understanding the special needs of rental dialysis patients helped it to remodel and improve the existing transport services.
When Medical Services first took over this contract complaints were high and the units and patients were not happy with the service, with constant missed or late arrivals for dialysis sessions. A series of meetings with the units formulated the plan to improve the whole transport experience. Driver’s shifts were aligned with the renal services needs. Regular drivers were assigned scheduled routes for the same patients. As the same driver was collecting the patients each week the arrival times improved as well as reducing the patient’s sense of frustration or stress. Each week arrival times improved and the patients’ sense of frustration eased; also the resulting improved relationships between drivers, patients and the dialysis unit staff helped to create a more efficient service for everyone involved. The clear benefits were: n Patients arrival times were improved and as close to the scheduled time as possibly can be, allowing for traffic and unplanned eventualities. n Patients wait times overall were by far reduced, with most cases the driver waiting for the selected patients to be booked ready. n Patients, by regularly having the same driver on the same route, feel more relaxed and less stressed arriving at the unit for their treatment. n The relationship between the unit, patient and driver allows the communication to build up that improves the service overall. n Less aborted or wasted journeys as the driver is building up the communication links with unit and patient. n Closer working relationships with the renal units, allowing forward planning and exploring the possibilities of the zoning of transport patients in some cases. Regular monthly meetings were set up with the Renal Unit to discuss the standards of service, improvements, any issues and potential route changes for coming months. We have now applied this method to other contracted renal services and similar benefits are being realised.
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