King’s College Hospital turns to Civica to help Princess Royal Hospital improve patient care following CQC inspection
Trust to save around £700,000 over the next two years with new system
Civica has partnered with King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust to improve patient care, implement a digital care records system, and become paper light, following the acquisition of Princess Royal University Hospital.
The trust has selected Civica’s WinDIP electronic document management (EDM) solution in conjunction with a third-party scanning solution to build upon an existing, highly-functional electronic patient record solution.
This will allow clinicians to obtain patient information from one central location and will assist the trust in its vision towards integrating health and social care. Overall the solution will save the organisation around £700,000 over the next two years, with a payback period of five years. It will also ensure that the trust meets the Government’s commitment to become paperless by 2018.
In October 2013, King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust took over responsibility for the Princess Royal University Hospital (PRUH) in Bromley, Kent. This followed the formal dissolution of South London Healthcare NHS Trust (SLHT). After the merger, PRUH underwent a Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspection, which identified historical problems with the availability of medical records, leading to repeat cancellations of outpatient appointments.
The Civica technology will deliver significant savings from a time perspective, but it also has far-reaching consequences for patient care. After all, consider the challenges of treating people properly if you can’t find their notes
Chris Ginnelly, managing director of Civica Digital Solutions, said: “King's College Hospital has made great strides in digitising hospital records and by working with partners has extended this best practice to PRUH. The trust is now in pole position to operate as one body and make faster, more-informed decisions about patient safety.”
King’s will also use the EDM solution to complete its own digital transformation. The hospital still stores a number of historical paper documents. Once it has brought PRUH up to speed, it will start processing historical documents through the Civica WinDIP EDM platform, which will fully integrate with the trust’s EPR system, the hospitals’ A&E Symphony system, and a host of other key clinical systems.
The trust has piloted the new systems in its dental and ophthalmology departments at the Queen Marys Hospital in Sidcup and intends to roll this out steadily throughout the whole organisation by February 2016.
Once fully deployed, all patient records will be held within the Civica WinDIP EDM system and available with one click of a button. The system will support the trust’s 1.5 million patients and 11,000 staff. The trust will also use Civica’s eForms and Workflow technology to input new data and trigger intelligent workflows, enabling clinicians to access patients’ historic medical records and treatment plans and provide the best possible care to them. The new system will also empower the organisation to meet Jeremy Hunt’s plans for a paperless NHS by 2018 and paves the way for a mobile strategy using iWinDIP further down the line.
Colin Sweeney, director of ICT at King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, said: “The new enlarged organisation is focused on providing first-rate care for patients, new and exciting opportunities for staff, and a strong operational and financial position to continually improve services. This programme furthers these aims. From the patient record point of view, navigating an easy-to-use system is far more preferable to physically tracking down and collecting paper files.
The Civica technology will deliver significant savings from a time perspective, but it also has far-reaching consequences for patient care. After all, consider the challenges of treating people properly if you can’t find their notes.”
- Companies:
- Civica UK Ltd
- Princess Royal University Hospital Orpington
- Kings College Hospital
