University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust (UHMBT) has launched an interactive timeline to showcase the digital projects spearheaded by its clinical and Health Informatics teams, which are improving patient care and experience.
By introducing the electronic patient record across the Trust’s main hospital sites it has produced some fantastic results including:
• 250,000 inpatient meals ordered through eMeals - an online system which can be accessed by ward staff via tablet computers to order patient meals. The old paper processes could take ward staff up to an hour and a half to complete. This means that staff on the wards have more time to spend on patient care and the system has reduced food wastage
• More than 5.7 million outpatient appointments made electronically (Since 1 Jun 2010) which has reduced the need for paper forms
• Around 3,000 drugs prescribed electronically per day across all of the Trust’s 59 different inpatient areas with 10,000 administration events recorded in December 2018. The system has cut down the time that clinical staff spend on paper notes so they have more time to spend with patients and has reduced avoidable harms associated with medications
• The diabetes outpatient department is 100% paperlite with other services close to this target improving the Trust’s carbon footprint.
Other exciting projects include the introduction of the electronic patient record in the Trust’s theatres. Thanks to a series of dashboards, theatre staff across all three main hospitals can view the progress of a theatre session, manage patient lists,
allocate teams for specific procedures and identify potential delays in schedules. This gives staff a single platform to carry out theatre check-in, manage anaesthesia and operation details, patient information in recovery and handover to the wards.
There is now greater flexibility for midwives working in the community who can access the latest information relating to a woman’s care remotely through laptops. Midwives are saving travel time as they no longer have to come back to base to enter handwritten notes into the electronic system.
Colin Brown, Chief Clinical Officer, UHMBT, added: “The benefits of systems like the electronic patient record to our clinical teams have been staggering. Technology really is revolutionising the way staff are working, strengthening partnerships between health and care organisations and giving patients a better experience of local healthcare.”
Andy Wicks, Chief Information Officer, UHMBT, said: “The Health Informatics team has been on an incredible journey over the past 21 years and we have witnessed health care transform thanks to the introduction of systems like the electronic patient record.”
You can find a link to the timeline here