Daisy Hill Hospital in Newry (Northern Ireland) have been using Swarms successfully in two critical applications: In Community Support Teams (Intermediate Care) and Patient Appointment Reminders.
Intermediate Care Team
How Swarms were used
Each member of the team was invited to join a Swarm.
Each day urgent messages would be communicated to the team via a Swarm Broadcast.
The Swarm Broadcast was usually effected via the web but could also be done via a team member’s mobile phone.
All messages were sent instantly to team members and were stored on a web-based Swarm messageboard along with all replies
Mandy O’Hare (Intermediate Care Team) using Swarms to broadcast a message to the team
Benefits Gained from Swarms
“The success of the Swarm technology has been the overall positive impact it has made on the Intermediate Care Teams ability to delivery accessible and responsive patient care in the clients own home enabling the right person make the most appropriate decision at the right time.”
Jacqueline Morton, Team Manager
Physiotherapy Department
How Swarms were used
Each day an extract was produced from the Microsoft Outlook Calendar for each participating physiotherapist containing all their appointments for a coming day.
These details were then automatically uploaded into a new and automatically generated ‘Swarm’ unique to each physiotherapist and each day.
Swarmteams was then used to broadcast a message to each patient booked on that day to remind them to ring or text to confirm their appointment.
It was also possible to issue 1:1 text message reminders (private messages) to any patient not responding to the swarm broadcast.
If a patient did not confirm then their appointment was removed and the slots made available for other patients to book
Sharon Gallogly (Physiotherapy Dept) using Swarms to broadcast a patient reminder message
Benefits Gained from Swarms
“The ability to use mobile phone texting has been very beneficial from a patient point of view as it reminded them of appointments and also ensured that they responded to appointment arrangements within the 48 hour deadline and confirmed or rearranged the appointment to a better time for them. This service improved the efficiency of our appointment system as well as patient choice.”
Teresa Ross, Physiotherapy Team Manager
