Roll out of electronic audit solution for Ambulance Station Infection Prevention and Control
South Central Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust (SCAS)
“SCAS turned to Doc-works who met and exceeded the brief to provide a fit-for-purpose, within budget Audit solution allowing the Trust to become paperless. We have been able to achieve a return on investment and save time by removing duplicated processes. Automating tasks and mandating action plans has significantly helped the Trust in the management of compliance, regulation and general analytics.”
Phil Convery, IPC Lead, South Central Ambulance Service
Challenge
SCAS were looking for a way to reduce their reliance on paper audits of Infection Prevention and Control in ambulance stations.
They required a software solution which allowed for the electronic capture of audits and automatic compilation and aggregation of data. It became clear however that the only solutions on the market were either beyond the allocated budget or not fit for purpose.
Solution
Doc-works built a bespoke audit solution from scratch which also had scope to meet wider requirements over time through modular architecture and data driven configuration. The AuditOnline solution was designed to allow the Trust to build and modify their own audit questionnaires significantly reducing the ongoing costs of ownership as there are neither frequent system modifications nor expensive consultant fees for configuration.
Using a single Trust-wide license any number of users could be added as well as any number of audit types. The Trust had the choice of purchasing devices or using existing equipment and where mobile devices were not available staff were able to perform audits on a PC.
The Trust was also able to produce a return-on-investment plan which worked within one financial year and set up a series of self-funding extension projects within any given financial year or approved in line with budget associated with CQC compliance.
Outcomes
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Easy-to-use app means that after initial training there are no ongoing staff training requirements.
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Adopt a continuous improvement approach to audits through the implementation of the Action Plan module for non-compliances.
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Data is automatically collated for timely intervention for missing audits and critical under-performance significantly reducing data collations costs.
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Within one month the Infection Control Lead was able to identify incomplete or missing audits and contact the responsible managers to ensure audits had been completed.
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Significantly reduced their reliance on paper audits and been able to demonstrate an ongoing return on investment.
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Within three months the executive had enough data to run their first quarterly review of the top five problem areas for the whole Trust providing valuable management information.
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Identified that the availability of staff who had the expertise to interpret and collate incoming forms was limited and that the cost of adding another Grade 7 employee was more expensive than the total cost of the solution implementation.
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Improved management of action plans which can now be automatically created on any non-compliance and assigned to the auditor within 24 hours.