There are three paediatric hospitals in the Dublin area, serving the entire country. Plans were drawn up by Health Service Executive (HSE) to merge these three hospitals into one large paediatric hospital and to relocate all services from the older, individual hospitals, centralising them in one site.
In anticipation of this Meridian were asked to carry out an in- depth analysis of the three individual theatre operations across the three original sites, identifying areas of opportunity, and also establishing where processes would have to be aligned prior to centralisation. Meridian identified low utilisation of theatres across all three sites, combined with disparity in processes and management control.
Meridian embarked upon a programme to align the procedures across all three sites. Included in this work was a refinement of the data capture processes and a full revision of the way the data was used to generate management information.
A new management control system was developed and installed across all three sites, meaning that for the first time utilisation could be compared across all individual and independent hospitals.
The management control system was developed from the ground up using input from key representatives from all departments, ensuring that it was strong enough to withstand scrutiny from the wide scope of stuff operating under its umbrella.
Following from this, robust review processes were installed to begin to highlight variances in performance so that actions could be set on rectifying issues. This necessitated the setting of targets and the defining of key performance indicators.
Due to the multi-site nature of the programme, a series of workshops were used to bring together the key representatives from each site.
During these sessions, agreement was made on the targets, the new processes and the implementation plans.
Aligned processes, targets and performance measurement systems across all three children’s hospitals. Significantly increased utilisation of the theatre resource across all three sites. Identification of combined capacity and resource requirements prior to relocation to single site Paediatric Hospital.