Pando Assists in NHS Trust’s Communication During a Major Incident

In February 2020, one of our partner organisations experienced a major incident.

By Alex Macfarlane
15th October 2020

In February 2020, one of our partner organisations experienced a major incident. Issues with IT infrastructure meant the hospital had to divert all but life threatening cases from A+E, and cancel elective surgery and outpatient activity. 

Currently NHS organisations lack an effective way to communicate with all staff on time critical issues. Trust wide emails are not read in real time, and are not easily accessible on mobile devices.

As a result, most operate a cascade system via sit rep meetings with face to face updates, and use of messaging apps. During the implementation of Pando at the organisation last year, we had explored the ability of Pando to deliver a message to all staff, instantly, in the event of an emergency.

How Pando helped

By liaising with a member of the trust’s command centre, Pando was able to deliver three key messages to staff over a 36 hour period during the major incident. These were a notification of a major incident, an update on various system states and, finally, information that the trust was out of major incident, with A&E accepting patients. 

We were also able to configure the trust-wide message to be sent from the Pando account of a member of the trust’s leadership team. This meant the information came from a familiar source, and provided a direct contact point for further relevant communication. 

Dr Martin Farrier, CCIO at Wrighington, Wigan and Leigh NHS Trust said:

“Getting real time information to our staff has been very helpful through the last couple of days – communicating being the most difficult part of organising an organisation!”

And Mark Singleton, Associate Director or IT added:

“We’ve made Pando available to all our staff who are now using it in all sorts of innovative ways to support the delivery of care across the Trust. Pando has allowed us to modernise our communication and reduce our reliance on pagers. The Wigan locality has also followed in our footsteps and has rolled out Pando in both Primary & Social Care. This allows clinicians to communicate securely across our organisational boundaries.”

At Pando, we look forward to refining our processes, and continuing to help healthcare organisations solve their communication challenges.

Any organisations needing a hand dispersing messages during major incidents, you know where we are!