Northampton General Hospital NHS Trust Quality Account 2016-2017

We said we would:
Provide care that is safe by reducing harm through improving the quality & timeliness of patient
observations.
What we achieved:
What: Failure to take patients observations in accordance with their planned and
prescribed care can lead to delayed identification of any potential deterioration
and therefore potentially delayed treatment.
How Much:
When:
Outcome:
We will measure all overdue observations data using VitalPac across all adult
general wards. Vitalpac is an electronic system for recording observations and
other clinical data. The system uses this clinical information to alert staff to
changes in the condition of our patients. We will aim to improve overdue
observation rate by 3% to achieve the Trust target of no greater than 7% overdue
observations.
In 2014-2015 the rate of overdue observations was recorded as an average of
9.14%.
Monthly point prevalence audit data has been collected since 2014 and circulated
to all adult general wards.
We have placed a threshold of acceptance at 7%. Any ward that is consistently
above that target receives targeted support with additional lessons learnt from
performing wards being utilised as good practice examples.
There has been a gradual improvement year on year with targeted support to
those wards demonstrating non-compliance including the use of additional iPod’s
to allow the ward co-ordinators to keep track of when patient observations are due
and prompt the appropriate staff accordingly. A gradual roll out of bay tagging as
a working principle has demonstrated an improvement towards the 7% target
being achieved.
The 2014 – 2015 out-turn was recorded as an average of 9.14%.
The mean for 2015 – 2016 was 8.61% demonstrating a 0.53% reduction from the
baseline.
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