Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust has deployed a new electronic patient record from Allscripts to help facilitate joined up care.
The trust has deployed the Sunrise Electronic Patient Record (EPR) across both its hospitals’ emergency departments, as well as paediatric inpatient services, gastroenterology and neurology outpatients and ordering tests and making referrals across the trust.
The move to the new EPR is a step closer to the trust’s ‘digital first, paper second’ strategy and already the clinical benefits are being felt. Manual, time-consuming processes have been digitised. The automation of labelling alone has saved staff eight hours per day in the processing of pathology forms which frees up time for hospital staff to spend more time caring for patients.
Additionally, because all information is recorded and stored within the EPR, clinicians have a better overview of each patient’s care pathway.
Within the trust’s emergency departments workflows are also being transformed through the use of the EPR.
Sue Forsey, director of IT for the trust, said: “Previously clinicians would be walking around to manually track patients, or to review notes from junior doctors. Now, all processes are stored in Sunrise, so notes can be reviewed or exchanged without having to take the trip down to ED.
“The tab functionality within Sunrise also allows our clinical teams to use the EPR to easily access other applications acting as a portal so they have the right information, in the right place, when they need it. Our patients will experience less repetition too as all clinicians in their care pathway will have greater visibility of their needs.”
The trust is the second of four acute trusts in the region to implement Allscripts Sunrise EPR. Neighbouring trust Medway NHS Foundation Trust has also signed with Allscripts for the Sunrise EPR, which is positively impacting on the digital maturity of the region.
Saunders continued: “We now have a ‘single tab’ to access shared data directly from Sunrise, which will enable us to work with neighbouring trusts in a more seamless way. The trust provides cancer services for the whole region, which is one of the most populous Integrated Care Systems in England, so the increased capabilities for data sharing provide a promising foundation for a more joined up, and ultimately better care, for patients.”
The next steps for the trust are to deploy Sunrise across all inpatient adult wards for core clinical documents. Then the rollout of an ePMA this year and next. These digital ambitions are all in support of the continued integration of the Kent and Medway Shared Care Record.