Gooroo beds process

Let’s start by talking through the process with you. If you decide to go ahead, then we can start work as soon as we receive the purchase order. 

1: Establish the current situation

We will start by gathering data about the current situation in your chosen bed pools, and hold initial director-level discussions about the acceptable clinical and operational risks caused by insufficient non-elective beds. The agenda is:

  • The scope of work: adult general & acute beds, critical care, paediatrics, maternity, by site?
  • Initial thoughts: how might current bed processes be improved?
  • How do non-elective patients overflow into other beds or board in the emergency department?
  • Data gathering: straightforward data about activity, and a census of available and escalation beds.
  • What management action is currently taken when high non-elective demand is expected?
  • An estimate of current idle bed time (turnover interval).

2: Perform the initial statistical analyses

We’ll get straight down to business, to perform the initial statistical analyses and produce bed diagrams showing how risk is currently borne in the organisation’s bed pools, and how that varies at times of high demand.

We will then present the initial findings to senior managers and clinicians, and agree an initial ‘long list’ of improvement scenarios to investigate in each bed pool for reducing excessive risks and managing costs.

The scenarios are likely to include:

  • Morning and weekend discharges
  • Reducing length of stay
  • Reducing idle bed time (turnover interval)
  • Admission avoidance
  • Moving elective work off-site to ‘cold’ facilities
  • Extra beds / integrating community beds
  • Responsiveness to forecasting
  • Any combination of these

3: Develop improvement scenarios

  • We will generate and share with you the agreed scenarios as we go along.
  • Then we present your choice of those scenarios to senior managers and clinicians.
  • After taking in any further alterations, we will submit all the analyses and scenarios in a form that can be copied and pasted into your organisation’s improvement plans.

4: Contingency

As your improvement plans progress, we will be standing by to take in further amendments to the scenarios and assumptions, and send the updated analyses to you for inclusion into further drafts.

Free Consultation

Beds are vital to patient safety and operational effectiveness.

They are worth getting right. It’s time to move away from the broad generalisations about bed occupancy that have served the NHS so inadequately over the years, and start planning beds properly based on acceptable risk.