Improving patient care and experience, saving bed days, and increasing expert input into pathways

• Developing OPAT for infective endocarditis – Project overview
• Project update – Oct 2022

The new King’s College Hospital outpatient parenteral antimicrobial therapy (OPAT) service, launched 5 September 2022, will save 563 bed days in its first three months, proving an exceptionally effective way to move people from the hospital setting.

Beyond caring for these patients closer to home, further bed days have been saved through the identification of referred patients to the OPAT service who were appropriate for discharge from hospital.

There has been a steady flow of referrals across a range of clinical specialties: spine, brain abscess, diabetic foot, infective endocarditis, and bone and joint pathways. The OPAT team has capacity to receive more referrals via team.

A clinical dashboard has been developed to track the success of this initiative – patient, outcomes, efficiencies, and populations served.

This six month pilot was originally funded by NHS South East London ICS. A business case for recurrent funding was submitted to the KCH board in January 2023 for continuation of this successful endeavour.

By January 2023, it is calculated that the service will save approximately 1,800 bed days. Bed day savings are calculated by the number of days already saved, plus the expected saved days for patients currently active on OPAT. KCH is on track to save 563 bed days through OPAT
service (Sep-Nov 2022).