Staff at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham (QEHB) have signed up to NHS Improvement’s Red2Green Campaign, which aims to reduce the time patients wait on the wards unnecessarily for the next stage of their treatment.

The Red2Green approach is simple – it is a visual way of helping staff identify wasted time in a patient’s journey. It is based on the understanding that a patient's time is the most important currency in healthcare.

At QEHB, each inpatient has either a red day or green day icon on the electronic Ward View system. A red day is one that has no benefit for the patient – nothing happens to help them along their pathway and towards discharge. A green day is a day of value for a patient – this means something has happened, e.g. a test or a therapy session, which gets the patient closer to discharge home.

Each day staff do everything they can to turn patients’ red days into value-adding green days. Patients can’t be turned green if an estimated date of discharge review and/or a senior medical review have not taken place that day.

After a successful pilot on six wards and several staff engagement and feedback sessions, Red2Green was rolled out to all QEHB inpatient wards last year.

Michele Owen, Interim Chief Nurse, said: “Red2Green is a cultural movement and a new way of looking at our patients’ journeys. It is about ensuring that everyone involved in a patient’s care, from frontline ward staff to those working in our support services, takes positive steps to remove delays in their journey.”

The aim of Red2Green is to create hospitals where:

• All patients, carers, relatives and staff are able to describe what is going to happen this morning, this afternoon and tomorrow to progress the care a patient needs to get home
• The only variable factor is the biological process of recovery, not the waits and frustrations of care systems
• Patients receive care and staff come to work knowing that the next step is ready and there is no unnecessary waiting

If you are an inpatient, you should be able to get answers to these questions every day:

• What is the matter with me?
• What is going to happen today?
• What is needed to get me home?
• When am I going home?

Dr Ian Sturgess, NHS Improvement’s Senior Clinical Improvement Adviser, who devised the system, said: “Reducing unnecessary waiting for patients, and unnecessary chasing up by staff, has to be a win-win for everyone working in and using our health and care systems.”

You can follow Red2Green on social media using the hashtag #Red2Green.