Scheduling
Detailed Service Description
Why Act?
Care providers have increasingly moved towards multi-disciplinary models. Currently a patient in a road
traffic accident will, by the time they reach the ward, have 30-50 carers and support staff engaged with
them from at least 10 departments. Acknowledging this complexity has increasingly become a necessity
and the impact on the scheduling process is profound. This can range from clinical activities i.e. ensuring
the patient is safely transferred to theatre and then to ITU to the simple, but equally important, like
ensuring the hospital catering service follows any patient movements. This complexity is amplified in an
integrated environment. In addition, the current manual processes prevent real transformational
innovation in how scheduling is handled. In the context of Integrated Care the challenge is not simply
one of how to replicate an existing scheduling process online, but how do you disrupt and transform
that process into a more effective state.
Traditional vertical scheduling models that are based on a “departmental diary” have been eroded by
the dual pressures of trying to reduce the length of patient stay and maximizing resource utilization.
Interdepartmental and/or provider horizontal scheduling, which reflects complex rules and the patient’s
condition itself, is increasingly a minimum requirement for an effective healthcare provider working at
scale. Integrated care increases the complexity of the scheduling challenge by involving multiple
providers and increasing the patient’s expectation of involvement through online channels. Unless
managed effectively, the ability to schedule between providers has the potential to be a hidden glassceiling on the extent to which services can be integrated.
To enable Integrated Care to work effectively scheduling has to work in an integrated manner. The
problem is that multiple providers are highly unlikely to have a common HIS managing a health economy
wide schedule. National programmes have tried to implement such solutions but their deployment was
at best patchy. The scheduling requirement remains and is in many ways compounded the greater the
level of integration required between providers.
Benefits
The ability to effectively schedule across provider and reflective of complex rules and event triggers is
central to integrated healthcare. The benefits provided include the following;
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Patient Throughput: By increasing the utilisation of equipment, and improving the alignment of
carers to the clinical process, delays in patient treatment can be removed. This improves throughput and also helps avoid safety events.
Patient Experience: By improving scheduling the patient spends less time in the care process and
their experience is more coordinated. It is overall a smoother, more joined up, experience.
Equipment Management: Expensive equipment can be more effectively utilized providing a better
return on investment.
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Resource Utilisation: Providers can reassign those resources applied to traditional scheduling into
other areas or take steps to avoid the associated costs.
How does it Work
CSC’s scheduling solution has two parts;
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A Brokering Platform: Handles booking requests and referrals from patients and providers.
Provider Specific Scheduling Engines: These engines do the actual scheduling at a local level.
The brokering aspect of the solution is critical as the ability to integrate is central to effective scheduling.
For example, scheduling events can come from process triggers, can require processes to be triggered or
can require information to be disseminated to other systems. To enable this, the CSC solution provides
asynchronous, web service and user interface integration to a range of underlying platforms including
PAS, EPR, Order/Comms, Coding/Billing and Clinical/Departmental.
As well as a messaging based interface, the brokering capability has a full web interface that enables
patients, and carers, to interact with their appointments. It handles the key questions of patient
identification, authorization, resource planning / schedule management and confirmation / reminder.
The scheduling engine part of the solution is a true rules based scheduling system that can handle the
management of resources and people at an organization, department and individual/resource level. This
enables working practices to be easily mapped and existing rules modelled. In addition complex rules for
slot management can be applied. For example, but not limited to, booking multiple patients to a slot,
booking multiple resources to a slot – each with different time assignments, hunting for free slots across
departments or providers, automatic rescheduling, serial appointments and scheduling order sets in
relation to an appointment.
Results
The overall result of the CSC solution is to increase the effectiveness of the scheduling activity to ensure
the right resources and carers are applied to the care process at the right time. Unnecessary scheduling
costs, together with negative impacts on the patient experience are avoided while throughput is
increased.
Why CSC?
CSC’s Healthcare Group – which serves healthcare providers, heath plans, pharmaceutical and medical
device manufacturers, and allied industries around the world – is a global leader in transforming the
healthcare industry through the effective use of information to improve outcomes, decision making and
operating efficiency.
From supporting local general practitioner surgeries to large hospital trusts, we’ve been working with
the NHS for years, delivering both tactical projects and strategic programmes.
In the last 10 years we have developed, implemented and continue to support over 1800 solutions.