MOBILE FUN MAKES HOSPITAL CONSULTANTS RED HOT!
Mobile Fun sources red cases for hospital consultants, providing Leicestershire and Rutland GPs with ‘bat phone’ access for on-the-spot patient medical consultations.
Consultants and GPs across Leicestershire and Rutland will soon be able to contact each other directly via a new ‘red phone system’. The aim of the system is to improve communication between GPs and relevant hospital consultants to ensure, where appropriate, that patients can be cared for safely in the community rather than being admitted to an acute hospital.
The red phone system, so called because the phones will be a distinctive red colour, will enable GPs in Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland and consultants from acute admitting specialities to be in direct contact with each other to discuss clinical cases where there is room for discussion about the most appropriate on-going management of an acute condition. This may include the GP obtaining clinical advice from the consultant to determine if hospital admission is really necessary or the consultant contacting a GP to enable more appropriate and timely discharge of patients from hospital.
Recommended by Vodafone, Mobile Fun worked with NHS Leicestershire County and Rutland, NHS Leicester City and University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust to ensure hospital clinicians’ phones all had the same look without any branding, to establish them as emergency hotlines. After consulting with the lead NHS project manager and identifying red as the project’s theme colour, Mobile Fun set about sourcing cases of this colour for the red phone system project. The ‘red hot’ mobile cases provided ensure that Leicester’s acute hospital clinicians can easily identify incoming calls on their on-call handsets.
Ian Wakeford, Head of Informatics at Leicestershire Health Informatics Service (HIS), says: “Mobile Fun provided the proactive sourcing service we needed, listened to our requirements and came up with the perfect answer. Thanks to our dedicated account manager, Mobile Fun ensured the products we needed were delivered in next to no time.”
Every GP practice in Leicestershire and Rutland will be given one dedicated red mobile phone for their practice, pre-programmed with a mobile number for each University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust (UHL) speciality. There are 24 UHL specialities across the three sites that have signed up to receive a red mobile phone and to receive calls by a consultant on call.
In addition, a further facility is available where two or more clinicians can discuss individual cases in more detail at a dedicated time via an audio and web conferencing facility or via a conference call facility from one red phone to another red phone.
Professor Aly Rashid, Medical Director for NHS Leicestershire County and Rutland and NHS Leicester City, said: “Ultimately, this system will benefit patients and ensure that they are getting the right quality of care in the most appropriate clinical setting. No-one wants to be in hospital for longer than necessary and this system will help clinicians discuss where best to manage their acute patients. If just one unnecessary hospital admission per GP practice could be saved per week the system would rapidly pay for itself. Other health communities are keen to adopt such a system if it proves successful in Leicester.”
Ruel Taylor, Director at Mobile Fun, concludes: “Immediate awareness of emergency calls is important, which is why we were delighted to help clinicians by providing the cases required to give their on-call mobiles a distinctive look. Our solution was simple and cost effective as, by sourcing red cases for the phones, they became instantly recognisable as emergency hotlines. The cases we sourced will prolong the life of the handsets, saving the NHS costs in replacing consultants’ phones in the future, while also protecting these all important emergency handsets. Our advisory service is open to everyone and, as proven by the consultation provided to Leicestershire HIS, we can offer the best possible results with a minimum of hassle in the time you need.”