Liverpool Women’s Hospital NHS Trust has announced the completion of e-prescribing in all but one of its in-patient clinical areas. Only the neonatal unit remains to be covered by the Meditech EP system, built with technology partners FileTek UK. The system provides total integration between the pharmacy stock system, patient prescriptions and other patient-based Meditech modules, as well as finance and accounting sub-systems. Paul Turner, who has led the pharmacy project at the Liverpool Women’s Hospital since its inception, is convinced that the system makes major contribution to the care and safety of the patients. He said: “We have acquired and developed a system that provides a fully integrated prescribing, supply and administration solution, thus eliminating the need for transcription. Users include medical, nursing and midwifery staff, plus staff in theatre areas, dieticians and pharmacy professionals. All use the same central electronic record which brings huge benefits for patient safety issues and risk reduction.” Paul Young, head of IM&T at the trust puts the implementation in context: “Electronic prescribing further advances our objectives of a paperless and centralised patient record. Our future developments and continued use of the Meditech software deliver large safety and efficiency gains around the important and complex area of medication prescribing, administration and supply.” Feedback from doctors indicates good advances in access to information, legibility and savings on time spent searching for mislaid paper files. An anaesthetist commented: “The use of order sets has enabled us to standardise some of our post-operative protocols, which is something we have been trying to achieve for some time. In addition we have found it a lot harder to lose a piece of computer hardware than a set of patient notes!”
