Digital pre-operative assessments at Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust are delivering ‘massive benefits’ across its three hospitals.
According to the trust’s head of pre-op, Dr Caroline Pritchard, the solution is supporting collaborative, multi-site working with staff across the trust simultaneously accessing digital patient records.
She said: “The pandemic increased the number of patients presenting for surgery simply unfit or with multiple, poorly-controlled medical conditions.
“Our paper-based pre-op process was viewed as a ‘black box’, as neither admin or surgical teams were able to routinely review the progress of their patients to help them plan their theatre lists unless they physically held the paper pack.”
In 2022, Buckinghamshire partnered with digital pre-op specialist, Synopsis, to launch its Synopsis iQ and Synopsis Home solutions, enabling patients to complete a digital pre-op questionnaire at home and the trust to reduce the use of paper pre-op records across its three hospitals.
We no longer have to move paper notes between our three hospital sites, or wait for notes to be scanned to the EPR, and there are no problems locating notes on the day of surgery
Dr Pritchard said: “Digital pre-op has delivered significant benefits across the trust.
“We no longer have to move paper notes between our three hospital sites, or wait for notes to be scanned to the EPR, and there are no problems locating notes on the day of surgery.
“All of the pre-op assessment information is readily available online, trustwide.
“And we can easily triage patients into fitness and readiness categories ahead of surgery, and reasons why patients may not be fit for surgery are now visible immediately to the whole surgical team.
“We can also plan and staff our clinics to match workload because the requirement for anaesthetic input as a notes review or face-to-face clinic is now visible.”
Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust is a major provider of integrated hospital and community services for people living in Buckinghamshire and surrounding counties, providing care to over half a million patients every year.
In addition, the trust provides specialist spinal services at the National Spinal Injuries Centre for patients across England and internationally.
The trust is also one of the first integrated acute and community providers in the country and the major provider of specialist, acute, and community healthcare services.
Its pre-operative department is spread over three hospitals; Stoke Mandeville, Wycombe, and Amersham.
