University Hospitals Bristol is outstanding with RLDatix

A dynamic and thriving group of hospitals in the heart of Bristol. The Trust and its 9500+ staff provide general diagnostic, medical and surgical services to the populations of central, south Bristol and the north of North Somerset, caring for approximately 350,000 people. The Trust provides specialist services such as children’s services, cardiac and cancer services and other smaller specialist services that are nationally commissioned.

Loss of confidence leads to search for a better patient safety system.

In 2014, University Hospitals Bristol began to question the patient safety and risk management system they were using, as it was quite onerous to work with and efficiency was a major problem. “Data sets would change and the lack of a full audit trail meant we weren’t confident in the information generated.” said Sarah Wright, Head of Risk Management at University Hospitals Bristol.

With the previous system, reports would be out of date so quickly, making version control impossible. There was very little to encourage staff to take ownership of incidents, reporting was plateauing, it was taking a long time for open incidents to be resolved and the creation of monthly reports was very onerous. University Hospitals Bristol decided to look for another system that would provide them with the opportunity to improve.

Customising RLDatix creates greater efficiencies for University Hospitals Bristol.

The Trust started to look for another solution which was a better fit for their requirements. In 2015 University Hospitals Bristol implemented RLDatix across the organisation, starting with Incidents, Dashboards, Complaints, Risk and later CQC compliance.

A key differentiator for Bristol was the ability to customise forms and fields within the RLDatix system, which has proven especially useful when it comes to dealing with risk. “The forms are customisable and we’re now able to assign different risks to different individuals, meaning staff members know exactly what their actions are, at what stage of the process. This robust process makes it very difficult for people to do the wrong thing.”

Since 2015, Bristol has set about using the RLDatix system to centralise their processes, meaning everyone has easy access to a central pool of triangulated data, making reporting faster and more transparent. Processes such as complaints handling have been improved drastically, with ownership being passed back to the divisional complaints coordinators. Sarah stated, “RLDatix has a good reputation in the organisation and people have a high-level of confidence in the data that is produced from it.”

The recent implementation of the CQC Compliance module has meant data within the system is linked and Bristol can immediately view their current status of compliance. “It encourages people to think about exactly how the risk is going to impact compliance… it drives people to think more about what they’re saying and reporting.” Bristol performs self-assessments throughout the year and now that they are able to link the risk to the element of the regulation that it relates to, the Trust has a much clearer overview of their compliance levels. According to Sarah, “We’re able to produce a report on all of the risks associated with CQC compliance which we’ve not easily been able to do before.”

"RLDatix has a good reputation in the organisation and people have a high-level of confidence in the data that is produced from it." 
Sarah Wright, Head of Risk Management at University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust

From ‘Requires Improvement’ to ‘Outstanding’

Since implementing RLDatix, University Hospitals Bristol is the first Trust to go from “Requires Improvement” to “Outstanding” with no inspections in between. Incident reporting rates have gone up, whilst the number of open incidents has gone down. They are now confident that if the CQC asks for new information, they are going to have it ready and available. Bristol realises, however, that “It’s not about really focusing on the CQC inspection, it’s about having a high standard of business as usual” and RLDatix has helped them achieve that. The whole team is more empowered with the dashboards of data that are shared across the whole organisation. Reporting rates and open incidents are right in front of everyone and with that knowledge Bristol can pinpoint potential problem areas and devise improvement methods.

Fast Facts

  • Since implementing the system, incident reporting has increased by 29%
  • Improved culture has seen no harm/near miss reporting increase from 309 to 4390
  • Quality control and readability of data has improved 100%
  • The number of historic open events has reduced by 50%
  • University Hospitals Bristol has a CQC rating of Outstanding
  • RLDatix is used by 2000+ users at University Hospital Bristol

University Hospitals Bristol is a RLDatix reference customer and is supportive of organisations who are considering upgrading or moving to RLDatix. Please get in touch if you would like to discuss the benefits they have experienced directly.

www.uhbristol.nhs.uk

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