University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust is the largest hospital in the south west peninsula of the United Kingdom, providing comprehensive secondary and tertiary healthcare. Its geography gives it a secondary care catchment population of 450,000 with a wider peninsula population of almost 2,000,000 who can access its specialist services.
Business Challenge
The trust’s Estates and Facilities department, which is in charge of site management for the physical locations, is spread across several offices and was seeing inefficiencies in how facilities maintenance needs were reported and responded to. Their FM system didn’t give them proper information about the individuals reporting faults, leading them to potentially waste time driving out to the location with the wrong team member needed to respond to the situation.
Solution
Since 2005, University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust has relied on MRI Planet as their facilities management system to handle maintenance requests and process planned and reactive work for other property damage or refurbishment, both urgent and non-urgent, to protect all of their patients and staff and save time for the Estates and Facilities team.
Planet sits in the background as a real workhorse of the organisation.
Laura Walker-Williams, Estates and Facilities Helpdesk Supervisor
University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust
Business Impact
Since its implementation, MRI Planet has led to a smooth integration of improved facilities management procedures in the NHS, running quietly in the background as the Estates and Facilities team utilises the comprehensive portal to respond to FM needs across locations.
Maintenance prioritisation
Calls for maintenance in the healthcare field can range from non-urgent requests to life-threatening situations, such as an issue with vital medical equipment. The trust utilises MRI Planet so that all non-urgent calls are filtered through the system, meaning that requests needing immediate attention can be seen right away by the proper staff, not hidden in a mountain of other non-urgent needs.
Efficient responses
MRI Planet gives University Hospitals Plymouth thorough information on the facilities maintenance request in a text format, which allows them to determine who and what is needed to properly assess and fix the problem faster. Detailed information also allows teams to give a prompt response to each individual request.
Thorough communication
If a user doesn’t submit all the information required in an FM request, MRI Planet enables the Estates and Maintenance team to track down and contact the person filling out the request through a global location network barcode. Through this feature, the trust is able to communicate with staff easier and in a manner that cuts down on the time it takes to respond to any given request.