Allocate Software, supplier of the UK’s most widely used workforce management, governance and compliance tools in healthcare has acquired RealTime Health Ltd, the supplier of patient flow software. RealTime’s software is used to improve patient care and financial performance by improving clinical processes which in turn lead to reduced average length of stay and increased inpatient capacity.
Sir David Nicholson has set the NHS a daunting and unprecedented challenge. Find £20 billion in efficiency savings by 2015 while also improving patient care. Three years in to that challenge it is evident that an increasing number of NHS Trusts are not confident that the challenge will be met. Traditional cost cutting and efficiency measures are not working as evidenced by South London Healthcare going in to administration. Providers need to re-focus their efforts on better planning and use of their workforce and beds. These ‘resources’ are inextricably linked to a trust’s productivity and income. They also account for over 80% of its costs. Optimising their use will lift trusts out of their financial predicament and improve the provision of care to more patients.
The acquisition of RealTime means that Allocate customers, who account for over 90 per cent of the NHS, will for the first time be able to work with a single software supplier to manage clinical activity, patient flow and bed optimisation alongside workforce management, governance and compliance.
Ian Bowles, Allocate’s CEO said, “We are focused on offering solutions that help our healthcare customer base meet the challenges of delivering modern healthcare with constrained resources. RealTime is proven to deliver significant ROI through better planning of patient discharge. This demonstrably reduces average length of stay and increases bed capacity which, in turn, allows providers to see more inpatients without increasing costs. Combined with our HealthSuite Software portfolio our customers now have access to a suite of unrivalled and integrated tools and expertise that allows them to make the most of available capacity and ensure their resources are closely aligned to patient demand and their productivity objectives.”
