With an annual turnover of approximately £324m, South Essex Partnership University NHS foundation trust (SEPT) is one of the most successful foundation trusts in the country, providing integrated care including mental health, learning disability, social care and community services from over 200 locations. SEPT also provides services across Bedfordshire, Essex, Luton and Suffolk and employs approximately 7,000 people and serves a population of 2.5 million.
SEPT works with a wide range of partner organisations to deliver care and support to people in their own homes and from a number of hospital and community based premises. It has many modern community-based resource centres and clinics to provide local services to local people where possible.
SEPT had a five-year plan to join up information across the trust, this included multiple systems and users, with key priorities being patient safety, quality of care, security, efficiency, carbon footprint and cost savings.
With these priorities in mind, the overarching goal was to provide a single patient record (unified record) augmented from multiple systems, including the digitised paper patient record.
With live patient records updated frequently, sometimes every 15 minutes, SEPT needed a solution that would be up and running 24-7. A clinical pilot project was implemented in 2009 and later expanded to non-clinical areas such human resources, finance and vehicle service management.
One of the key drivers and focal points for SEPT was to ensure that it addressed the accessibility requirements set out by NHS England, in that everyone with a long-term condition or disability must have a digital personalised care plan accessible online or via a mobile phone by 2015.
Fortrus, recent winner of the 2013 Document Manager Award for Public Sector Project of the Year, is proud to share the success achieved with SEPT, outlining the significant progress made to date on their journey to deliver an integrated digital care record. Through the use of the innovative Fortrus solution Unity, the world's first unified health viewer, SEPT is meeting many of the requirements for digital care plans, and will exceed all requirements ahead of 2015.
Dr Llewellyn Lewis, deputy medical director for Essex, says of the programme:
Through bringing together all of our records from every service involved in our patient's journey we're not expecting our patient to tell their story over and over each time they have contact with a new service or team and we're making it easier for the trust staff to find information about what care they have had in the past, where and by whom at the touch of a button [using the Fortrus Unity solution].
I have found the implementation of EPR [the Fortrus Unity solution] invaluable in allowing me to provide rapid access to patients who may be experiencing early warning signs of relapse, as I can reference their notes immediately without needing to wait for paper copies from medical records. It has allowed the maintaining adherence programme team to develop a very responsive service which has been very well received by patients. I can also see what other teams are doing with patients, improving communication between multiple teams and reducing risks of lost information. Recently additional functionality has been piloted in MAP: I am able to input my clinical notes by typing directly into continuation sheets. This has meant I don't have to send my paper notes off for scanning. The form pre-populates patient name and NHS number and as it is filed directly into the medical tab, my notes are immediately available to the rest of the team as soon as I have seen the patient.
SEPT achievements to date include:
• Care plans are available to a carer and relatives, where and when appropriate
• Tens of millions of patient documents have been digitised
• A patient demographic staging database has been delivered, that records critical patient information
• Luton and Bedfordshire have also been integrated into the Unified solution
• Unity has been rolled out across all SEPT Secure services (eight wards including staff members)
• Over 70 electronic forms (eforms) have been built and deployed along with complex associated workflows, which included redesigning and developing all paper work as electronic forms and training all appropriate staff
• The Unity solution from Fortrus has also been extended to non-clinical departments such as operations and human resources
The SEPT digitisation programme delivered in partnership with Fortrus has already improved patient care, and has been recognised by the Care Quality Commission when it stated in a recent report:
"People were protected from the risks of unsafe or inappropriate care and treatment because accurate and appropriate records were maintained."
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