Old&new - nervecentre software amendment to improve Frailty In-Reach triage.

Abstract

Diverting patients to the community is one of the solutions to mitigate overcrowding in emergency departments, which is the role of the Frailty In-Reach service. To improve the triage time of patients referred to the Frailty In-Reach service and decrease the administrative burden by amending the existing clinical software and creating a dedicated profile overview to include an automatic patient list with relevant clinical details. We measured the pre- and post-software amendment triage times and collected mixed-method feedback from the service users. Based on data from 10 consecutive working days (five pre- and five post-intervention) and 95 patients, the triage time was decreased by 60.3% (from mean 16 min, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 3 to 29, to 6 min, 95% CI = 2 to 10; P = 0.037). The post-implementation feedback revealed increased efficiency (from 27.5% to 87.5%) and overall increased satisfaction with the process. We successfully improved the triage system within the Frailty In-Reach service with digital technology.