Richard Hamilton

Hospitals are reactive in nature and have learned to manage through daily “firefighting”. The concept of planning today, tomorrow or next week through the use of patient prediction tools was a foreign concept.

Emendo offered to break the historic reactive management paradigm by offering a set of planning tools that would manage our most critical resources, beds and nursing staff. The vision of having leaders predict patient demand, and therefore schedule resources to match the demand, weeks ahead of the event, was a significant stretch in thinking. “It can’t be done”, “we will be putting patients in harm”, “our demand each day is not predictable”.

Emendo helped us see through the noise and focus on the core drivers of bed utilisation and staff resourcing. Through the aid of planning tools and specialist production management skills Emendo were able to demonstrate to our organisation how the ‘dream’ could be current reality.

To achieve a return on the investment in just months, and to maintain the savings over a sustained period, was an outstanding result in itself. Our hospital would not have survived another winter without the aid of the tools and learnings we put in place around CapPlan. We are now able to cope with higher demands on beds and maintain and effective flow of patients. We have reduced the ED patient hours by over 20% (reducing time in ED to under 2 hours), which has improved patient safety.

The less tangible outcomes are even more encouraging – front line staff are working under more satisfying conditions and patients are benefiting from this. The Wards are running smoother and the bottom line is looking healthier at the same time.

Such results have been achieved with strong commitment from the Executive team. Emendo have enabled us to achieve some very ambitious goals, which are now being reset to challenge us to achieve even more.

CapPlan provides excellent information for planners, Heads Of Department, the COO and front line staff. This information has improved decision-making and the operation of the hospital has moved significantly from reactive to proactive. Overall performance and patient care have both improved.

Richard Hamilton, Business Development Manager, Canterbury District Health Board