NHS Dumfries and Galloway case study: balancing capacity with demand

Support from the Top

Julie White, Chief Operating Officer explained why the hospital believed Daily Dynamic Discharge would help it to overcome its patient flow challenges:

"The Daily Dynamic Discharge approach promotes proactive patient management for today and supports staff to prepare for tomorrow. It increases understanding about our current position with regard to discharge and clearly demonstrates the need to create capacity at key points throughout the day. This is aligned to The Royal College of Physicians acute medical care objective "the right person, in the right setting - first time". Many staff groups have an important part to play in the planning of a safe discharge of patients and Daily Dynamic Discharge enhances our current processes by promoting a multidisciplinary team approach, with teams working collaboratively and more robustly."

Daily Dynamic Discharge was added to the agenda of the next Unscheduled Care Group, which is a group of local Emergency Department clinicians, a clinical lead for medicine, nurse managers, capacity managers, an out of hours manager, social workers, pharmacists, Allied Health Professionals, a representative from Short Term Augmented Re-ablement Services ( STARS), health intelligence analysts, Information Services, improvement lead for the Board and a project manager.