Like many industries, the healthcare sector has had to pivot to remote work and virtual experiences as it navigates  the future of healthcare after the global health pandemic.

These recent events have shown that digital technology and data have become indispensable tools for healthcare professionals as they adapt to changes across their organisations. Many healthcare leaders are reassessing their plans and imagining a future where technology is used as a key enabler in helping to overcome the challenges caused by the pandemic.

This is the first of a two-part blog series where we’ll explore how Microsoft Dynamics 365 (Dynamics 365) can enable hospitals to modernise and augment their business processes when it comes to facilities and resource tracking, HR management and waste management.

In this blog, we’ll look specifically at porter management and resource tracking.

NHS Trusts are similar to small cities, they have many buildings and facilities serving different purposes with a wide range of resources and people spread across them in different capacities.

Maintaining this amount of infrastructure is a huge undertaking for the operations and facilities  teams who handle day to day maintenance that keeps the hospital running,  from changing light bulbs, to cutting grass, to maintaining elevators, to ensuring that the right clinical equipment is ready and available for daily use.

Typically, the systems that these teams use are disparate, disconnected and decentralised. This can cause delays in work, miscommunication between teams and possibly oversight when it comes to caring for patients.

With Dynamics 365, healthcare organisations can manage facilities and resources by utilising an end-to-end, cloud-based facilities management solution. By incorporating these processes into a unified, cloud-based platform, NHS Trusts can work towards a centralised facilities and resource management system.

The Dynamics 365 platform has a portal-based user interface that NHS facilities users can use to submit service requests from any device. The user interface also includes an interface for NHS operational staff to keep up to date with stocks and scheduled work, using Dynamics 365 Field Service. This interface enables them to view and update work order requests, query, and request inventory from storage, and maintain up-to-date status for the duration of the work order from a mobile device.

Let’s take a look at the benefits of using Dynamics 365 for porter management and resource tracking.

 

Centralise processes for efficiency

No one has time to look through 20+ systems to find the information they need, not least during a pandemic. Disparate systems require staff to manually search for all the relevant data on one issue, eating up time that could be spent solving the issue. Dynamics 365 uses a common data model and can be integrated with various other data sources, enabling you to gain a 360 view of each issue in one profile. No need to search through disparate, legacy systems, everything you need to know is in one place.

 

Increase organisational agility

Typically, porters and other field-based operatives do not have a way to see outstanding tasks and have a set schedule they need to complete, with no way of reporting delays or completing the task quickly. Dynamics 365 is designed to be used by any team in an organisation, meaning staff from across the trust can update the platform in real time. This provides every team with visibility on task progression, saving valuable time.

 

Reduce operational costs

NHS trusts work with a variety of suppliers, but without a centralised tracking platform it is hard to plan for when supplies and equipment is going to arrive for scheduled work across different teams. An end to end inventory management system can allow NHS trusts to keep track of their inventory and centralise the view of stocks enabling efficiencies in stock ordering across multiple vendors.

 

Improve user satisfaction

Dynamics 365 offers your team the ability to proactively detect, troubleshoot, and resolve issues so they are dispatched only when necessary. This can lead to automated and improved scheduling to dispatch the right people to resolve tickets faster and allow your people to be more productive with the right tools at their fingertips while mobile or in the field.

 

NHS Trusts could implement solutions for storage and inventory management, asset procurement, and automated scheduling to create an end-to-end solution that could complemented by a powerful analytics component using Power BI and Cortana Intelligence to reveal insights about facilities management and identify opportunities to create greater efficiency in facilities management processes.

By Stefan Pilipovic