Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust serves south west London and north east Surrey through two main hospitals, Epsom and St Helier, with clinics at Sutton Hospital. Around 900,000 patients come through the doors every year, looked after by almost 5,000 staff and 500 volunteers. Both are teaching hospitals, working with St George’s Hospital and St George’s Medical School to train the next generation of doctors and nurses.
In the spring of 2020, the trust took on something else entirely.
The challenge: a 300 bed recovery centre, needed immediately
As Covid-19 took hold of the UK, the hospitals combined resources to open a new treatment facility at Headley Court in Surrey: more than 300 beds for patients recovering from the virus, due to open in May 2020. The centre needed equipment and supplies at speed, at exactly the moment every delivery in the country was taking longer than usual.
According to reseller PCS, the trust had been using charging units from another manufacturer and had experienced faults and poor service. A hospital in a crisis has no time for technology that does not do what it promised. PCS had worked with LapCabby before, and recommended them.
The fix: DeskCabby with a keypad instead of a key
DeskCabby was chosen for the environment: small, compact, and fitted with a bespoke keypad locking system in place of the standard key. With that many staff sharing the units, keys would be lost or left in the lock. A keypad cannot be left anywhere.
The trust wanted 38 units immediately, with no time to wait for a production run. So the order was split: the first half shipped straight away, the remainder made to order. And rather than join the queue at the overwhelmed courier networks, LapCabby delivered on its own vans, with its own drivers.
What changed
The recovery centre got its charging infrastructure without waiting for production schedules or courier backlogs, secured by keypad for a building full of shared devices and shift work.
Half the order shipped at once. The rest made to order. All of it on LapCabby’s own vans.