Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust (LCFT), provider of health and wellbeing services for a population of around 1.4 million people, uses Datix software to drive consistently excellent standards of care and patient safety across the organisation.
Since implementing Datix, LCFT has successfully recorded an average of 25,000 incidents a year, and almost tripled the number of risks reported since 2012. At the same time, it has created a highly-flexible framework that aids regulatory compliance and inspires confidence in commissioners who have commended the trust for its effective management of serious incidents.
LCFT has expanded the original Datix system to encompass Incidents, Claims, Risk Register, Customer Care, Safety Alerts as well as Dashboards and Hotspots modules. Datix was initially selected for its flexibility and high levels of configurability.
Matthew Joyes, associate director of safety and quality governance at LCFT, said: “Datix is a key safety and quality solution that is highly flexible, allowing us to use it for much more than reporting data. It has become a highly-valuable, strategic tool that enables us to ensure our healthcare environment is run efficiently in a very-visible way, essential in today’s demanding regulatory and ever-changing NHS landscape.”
Three additional healthcare organisations merged with Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust in 2011. LCFT set up the Quality SEEL framework (Safety, Effectiveness, Experience & Leadership), a quality improvement and assurance framework designed to track the performance of its four new clinical networks against the Care Quality Commission (CQC) standards. The Safety and Quality Governance Department then trained staff to ensure any gaps were recorded on the Datix Risk Register. The new programme and associated training has been so successful that the number of risks recorded has risen dramatically from 685 in 2012 to 1,699 to date in 2015, nearly a three-fold increase in as many years.
The Datix system has achieved widespread adoption across the trust because staff recognise the benefits of using it.
Eileen Stokes, risk manager at Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust, said: “Staff have embraced the Datix Dashboards module for its easy-to-use functionality, versatility and graphical displays. It is has helped to transform our approach to incident management and dramatically fostered an environment of greater collaboration across the organisation and with commissioners.”
Staff also use the Datix Hotspots module and have the ability to highlight potential problem areas, such as self-harming, where a ‘hotspot’ limit is set so that the issue is escalated to management should a certain number of self-harming incidents occur. This provides the evidence necessary to make meaningful changes.
Jonathan Hazan, director at Datix, said: “Changes in healthcare guidelines, policies and regulation are all designed to make a better health service for the population. However, they can put constant pressure on healthcare organisations to deliver excellent patient care safely and on budget.
Datix is a proven patient safety and risk management solution with a long track record of helping healthcare managers make fast and effective decisions based on data and shared learning to help keep patients safe from harm.”
