Workshop name:
Flowopoly
Workshop description:
Increase your awareness of the data needed to describe and understand unscheduled care patient flow in NHS acute hospitals.
Workshop duration:
One day (09:30 to 16:00)
Max. no. of participants:
36
Flowopoly combines game-style replays (with boards on tables representing hospital wards and credit-card-sized cards representing individual patients) with group exercises that involve looking at data to work out the 'ought-to-be' numbers associated with a high-functioning unscheduled care system.
Flowopoly consists of two participative, interactive replays. First, a 'bad' day; secondly, a 'good' day in the life of an unscheduled care system at a medium-sized DGH. It enables us to generalise from a specific bad day and a specific good day to bad days in general and good days in general.
As well us as using the replays themselves as data exhibits, we also use grids as a way of visualizing patient flow data to help people understand the arithmetical and cause-and-effect relationships between different parts of the system. We also introduce scatterplots (including the 'Top Right Hand Corner of Doom' scatterplot) as a way of developing our understanding of the cause-and-effect relationships.
In the afternoon sessions, we learn and practice how to formulate the numbers associated with high performance. We also spend time discussing how to overcome the cultural and behavioural barriers that need to be surmounted in order for a data-driven approach to patient flow to succeed.
Session 1
9:30 to 11:00
The Bad Day
After a brief introduction to the aims and objectives of the day, we collaboratively set up the tables, boards and cards so that we can replay a 'bad' day in the life of a district general hospital. We replay all of the patient moves: arrivals, transfers and departures. We pause the replays at selected 15-minute intervals to allow ourselves time to take stock and review what we have witnessed.
Following the replay of the bad day, we spend some time looking at how we might use more conventional data exhibits to describe the key events of the day.
Session 2
11:15 to 12:45
The Good Day
After coffee, we collaboratively set up the hospital in readiness for the 'good' day replay. We explain how the bad and good days were selected, how care has been taken to ensure that they are typically bad and typically good days (as opposed to unusually bad and unusually good days).
Towards the end of this session, one the 'bad' day replay has been completed, we move onto looking at how we can generalise from the specific bad and good days that we have replayed and witnessed. This generalisation lays the basis for the learning of the afternoon sessions.
Session 3
13:30 to 14:45
Flow relationships and flow arithmetic
In the third session we move on from our generalisations about good and bad days and begin to look at how the three core metrics (1. How many? 2. How long? 3. How full?) can link up with the three staging posts (1. Emergency Department; 2. Acute Assessment; 3. Downstream specialty wards) to enable an understanding of what causes what to happen in the unscheduled care system. We look at how we can formulate 'ought-to-be' numbers for different parts of the system.
Session 4
15:00 to 16:00
How to embed 'ought-to-be' flow metrics into patient flow decision-making
In the final hour of the workshop, we examine how 'ought-to-be' flow metrics (for example, if your average inflow is 4.5 patients per day, and your average fullness needs to be 74.2 patients, your average length of stay needs to be 16.5 days) can be introduced, embedded and monitored on an ongoing basis in real life settings.
Flowopoly is most commonly booked as an on-site workshop for £1,250+VAT, and up to 36 participants can be accommodated in a workshop session facilitated by Neil Pettinger. Email info@kurtosis.co.uk to start making arrangements.