By ten on a Tuesday, three discharges are pending and none of them are certain. The first case started late, and last month’s theatre utilisation figures are still a request sitting in a queue.
Everything needed to handle those three problems already exists inside your patient administration system. The PAS Productivity Platform is the layer that makes it visible while there is still time to act on it.
We announced the platform in August. This piece goes a level deeper, module by module, with a walkthrough video for each.
A layer, not a new system
The PAS Productivity Platform sits on top of MasterCare PAS. It is not a replacement for it and it is not a separate system running alongside it.
That distinction does more work than it sounds like it does. There is nothing to migrate. Teams sign in with their existing credentials, and ward structures, theatre configurations, surgeon profiles and patient records carry across directly from the PAS already in use. There is no parallel running and no drawn-out change project. Modules can be switched on in stages, which means a site can start with the one that solves its most pressing problem and add the others later.
It is also browser based, so there is nothing to install and nothing for IT to deploy to each workstation. Staff open it the way they open anything else, on whatever device is nearest. That has a practical consequence beyond the rollout. A live view is only useful if people can reach it from where the work actually happens, and requiring a specific installed client on a specific machine is how live views end up being consulted twice a day instead of continuously.
Most hospitals and day hospitals already hold everything they need to manage bed flow and theatre utilisation well. What has been missing is a way to see it at the moment a decision has to be made, which is why so many teams have filled the gap with spreadsheets, whiteboards and phone calls.
Bed management: seeing the week, not just the shift
Bed managers, nurse unit managers and discharge teams often start the day rebuilding a picture of the ward from scratch. Who went home overnight. Which bed has been cleaned. Which patient is waiting on a script before they can leave.
Bed management replaces that rebuild with a single live view of bed state across the facility, with every bed visible and colour coded by status. From the same screen, teams can allocate beds, manage transfers, record patient leave and trigger escalations. There is no separate screen for seeing and for doing.
Three things in the module go beyond the live view, and they are the ones worth dwelling on.
Demand over the next seven days. The view is not limited to right now. Teams can see where demand is heading across the coming week, which turns bed management from a reactive activity into a planning one. Most bed pressure is visible days before it becomes a problem, if anyone is looking that far ahead.
Turnaround measured against target. Bed turnaround is tracked against a target rather than simply recorded, so flow problems surface as they develop rather than in a report at the end of the month.
Staffing position at a glance. Today’s staffing position shows as green, amber or red, alongside the week ahead. Beds and staff are the same capacity question, and seeing them separately is part of why the answer often comes too late.
Alongside this, a predicted discharge list gives each patient a confidence level and any known blockers, so teams can prioritise early rather than discovering at 3pm which discharges were never going to happen. Often the blocker is administrative rather than clinical: a script, a transport booking or a summary waiting on a signature.
Time-based and capacity-based escalation triggers flag pressure before it builds and the module surfaces the decisions that need attention now so that handover between shifts is clean rather than reconstructed.
Theatre management: catching the late start before it costs the day
Theatre coordinators face a version of the same problem from the other side of the facility. A list gets built, then rebuilt, as pre-admission status, surgeon preference and room availability each change independently of one another.
Theatre management brings the whole list into one live view. Every theatre and every case is visible at a glance, from booked and pre-operative through to recovery and discharge. Pre-admission status sits in the list view itself, so the team knows which patients are ready before the first case starts. Knowing at 7am that the third case is not pre-admitted is a different day to finding out at 11am.
Rescheduling is drag and drop. When something moves, the list is adjusted directly rather than rebuilt. Because the list updates directly, a late start can be caught and absorbed early, before it compounds through every case that follows.
Surgeon preferences are captured once and applied automatically to how lists are built, rather than living in a coordinator’s memory or on a laminated sheet in the tearoom. This is one of the quieter dependencies in a theatre operation. When the person who knows the preferences is on leave, the list gets built worse.
Capture happens as the case moves. Observations are recorded and trends tracked, and the team steps through timeout and session close in the same place. Timing, prosthetics, specimens and MBS items are captured as the case progresses rather than reconstructed afterwards from notes, which matters for billing accuracy as much as for the clinical record.
Utilisation and turnaround dashboards then show how each session is tracking against target in real time. That means a session running behind can be caught while there’s still time to act on it.
Because the platform is browser based, the module works on any device including touchscreens. Coordinators and theatre staff can use it at the point of care rather than walking back to a workstation to record something that happened five minutes ago.
Ad hoc reporter: answering a new question without raising a request
Every hospital holds the answers in its data. Getting them out has usually meant joining a queue.
The ad hoc reporter is a self-service report builder, which means an operational manager can answer a new question without raising a request and waiting on someone with the right access.
Start by choosing a data source. A row per theatre case, a row per bed allocation, or a row per admission. When theatre, bed and billing need to sit side by side, there is a combined episode summary.
Then build. Choose your columns and drag to reorder them. List the matching rows, or summarise into groups with totals and a chart. Filter and sort, and roll dates up to month, quarter or financial year. Export to CSV, Excel or PDF.
Save it with the question it answers. A saved report goes into the library labelled by the question it was built to answer, so the next person finds the report rather than rebuilding it. Over time that library becomes the record of what the organisation actually asks.
For anyone who would rather not build at all, the questions library ships pre-loaded with ready-made reports. Pick the question you would ask out loud.
All of it runs off the patient administration system you already have.
Starting with one module
Sites can start with any module and add the others when they are ready. The platform is available to existing MasterCare PAS customers and to any hospital, day hospital or procedure facility taking up MasterCare PAS for the first time.
Because configuration carries across from the existing PAS, the setup conversation is usually about who needs access and how escalation thresholds and targets should be set for your facility, rather than about data preparation.
Further modules are planned through the year, including simplified admissions and discharge functions and a discharge planning and coding optimisation module.
See it against your own configuration
If you would like to see any of these modules running against your own ward structure and theatre configuration, talk to your account manager or get in touch with our team.
Frequently asked questions
Does the PAS Productivity Platform replace MasterCare PAS? No. It is a productivity layer that sits on top of MasterCare PAS and runs off the same data. There is no system replacement.
Is data migration required? No. Ward structures, theatre configurations, surgeon profiles and patient records carry across from the existing MasterCare PAS deployment. Teams sign in with their existing credentials.
Can we take one module without the others? Yes. Modules can be switched on in stages, and sites can start with whichever one addresses their most pressing problem.
Which modules are available now? Bed management, theatre management and the ad hoc reporter.
Do we need to be an existing MasterCare PAS customer? No. The platform is available to existing customers and to any hospital, day hospital or procedure facility taking up MasterCare PAS for the first time.
Is the PAS Productivity Platform browser based? Yes. It runs in the browser, so there is nothing to install on individual workstations and nothing for IT to deploy or maintain per device.
Does it work on tablets and touchscreens? Yes. Because it is browser based it works on any device including touchscreens, which means theatre management can be used at the point of care.
