Communication issues across the NHS in England cost the taxpayer upwards of £1 billion per year. Not only could these funds be better spent improving healthcare outcomes for patients, a lack of effective communications (including quality and accuracy of information) is one of the leading reasons for hospital complaints.

Paper is still the primary way NHS staff manage tasks

However, despite increases in funding across the NHS to integrate digital solutions into everyday operations, the reality remains that paper is still the primary way NHS staff manage tasks. This is compounding NHS communications problems; staff often are forced to use outdated or manual communications tools like bleeps, phone calls, and instant messaging apps like ‘WhatsApp’ to find out patient information. This is time-consuming, only accessible to those who have it in their hand (or pocket), and at times is non-compliant with data-security standards.

Introducing a digital task management platform, like Infinity’s, helps solve healthcare communication problems and is a key way organisations can improve patient safety and make improvements to the staff welfare issues that are pervasive in the NHS.

Patient flow and caseload management

Communication problems in the NHS occur for a range of reasons, often stemming from a lack of tools to coordinate, track, and document patient care in real-time. The impact of communications problems on patient flow and sustainable caseload management has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic - with 2020 seeing a significant increase in hospital admissions, and three waves of the virus putting the NHS on emergency footing. There has never been a more pressing time to improve healthcare communications to save valuable clinical time and ensure that health and care staff can more easily, safely, and efficiently manage their workloads.

A wider approach to digital healthcare communication

Wider approaches to digital healthcare communications and collaboration lead to significant time-savings for staff. Instead of replacing one communications tool for another, some organisations are using digital task management tools to improve both patient safety and workflow. They have found that digital task management platforms, like the one offered by Infinity Health, are saving hours of time each day and improving efficiency, patient flow, and most importantly promoting better communication across the NHS and other healthcare organisations.

At London North West University Healthcare NHS Trust for example, staff in the early supported discharge and rapid response community team are using Infinity’s digital task management platform to add new tasks to their patient list, check off the tasks they have completed for their colleagues to see, and more easily and safely organise their days.

“Using Infinity has improved our team’s communication – it’s a lot easier to keep in contact about tasks for the day. Things change all the time, so it’s great to be able to add tasks to the platform and know the clinical team will be able to see and act on it immediately from a visit, without having to call, email, or text them.”

— Team Leader
STARRS, London North West University Healthcare NHS Trust

Not only has the department seen an improvement in ease of communication, Infinity’s digital task management platform is saving more than eight person-hours per day - in travelling to and from patients, in calling, in emailing, in texting, in instant messaging. It’s helping some clinicians to see 1-2 more patients each every day - a capacity increase of up to 55% - and it’s making sure staff can easily see tasks that they may have missed.

It’s now up to the NHS to turn to digital healthcare solutions to improve caseload management and start to solve its £1 billion communications problem. Not least to save money, but also to boost clinical safety, patient flow, and staff welfare.

If you’d like our assistance in tackling communication problems within your organisation, get in touch with us by emailing [email protected] - we’d love to help.