Escalation Management System for the NHS and Healthcare Trusts

Escalation Management System

OPEL Level Management Software

EMS or Escalation Management System is a bespoke software application used to record, aggregate and disseminate OPEL (Operational Pressures Escalation Levels), a method used by the NHS to measure the stress, demand and pressure a hospital is under. This system was developed in conjunction with an NHS Foundation Trust to provide their operational command centre with a state of the art monitoring and reporting capability across the Trust.

Developed In Partnership with the Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust, and implemented within their Command Center

What does EMS do?

How it can be used

Messages

Message content is templated and can contain OPEL levels, time declared etc when a new level is reached.

Recipients

Message recipients belong to configurable groups (e.g. Silver command).

Events

Messages can be sent using specific templates, in response to level changes in any of the metrics.

The Purpose of EMS

To Improve Efficiency and Patient Care

EMS was designed and built with the core aim of improving the efficiency and response time after OPEL levels change within a hospital or trust. With the system being able to notify and update users, it reduces the amount of time for information to be passed on to the relevant party or authority and can lead to the required action being taken sooner.

How EMS Was Built

The System and Platform

The Escalation Management System was built in partnership with the Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust in order to ensure it met all of the trusts requirements as well as meeting the NHS guidelines and certifications regarding security and compliance of software and systems used in trusts and NHS hospitals.

The System is delivered as a responsive web application which can be used on any number of devices within the hospital or trust, such as Operating room monitors, laptops, tablets and mobile phones.
The heart of the system is the collection of measures which are used to calculate the OPEL levels for metrics, categories and ultimately the organisation.
The primary visualisation for the application shows metrics around the outside that feed into categories and an overall organisation level. The side panel shows the data for any of the elements, in this case, the number of resus bays occupied.

The metric levels are calculated using a variety of methods; ascending thresholds, descending thresholds or direct level entry. The calculation for categories and the organisation is by weighted thresholds which allows the calculations to be fine-tuned to prioritise metrics within a category or categories within the organisation.

Escalation Management System for the NHS and Healthcare Trusts