NHS Trust deploys mobile electronic observation solution to reduce patient mortality
Nursing tech fund assists Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust to deploy Nervecentre’s mobile electronic observation solution
Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust (HEY) has agreed a five-year deal with Nervecentre to deliver its e-Observations Decision Support System across the organisation.
The solution, the deployment of which has been speeded up through an award from the £100m Nursing Technology Fund, will enable the trust to reduce mortality, improve patient safety and reduce harm.
The Nervecentre solution provides clinicians with the ability to record and monitor patient observations via a mobile device. Its key functionality includes sophisticated cascading escalation, with deteriorating patients’ vital signs being relayed to the most-appropriate clinician in order for a ‘recognise and rescue’ plan to be put in place. In addition, specialist functions, such as Hospital-at-Night, will allow escalations out of hours – ensuring patient care remains consistent 24 hours a day and helping HEY to achieve standard 243 of the Francis Report – recording of routine observations.
The tender process has allowed HEY to ensure it has made the best decision to meet its ongoing vision to provide safe, high-quality effective care by ensuring efficient economic use of resources, particularly staff
Steve Jessop, the trust’s chief nurse information officer, said: “We needed smarter and more-efficient ways across the organisation of detecting the sick, deteriorating patient, and providing a timely and effective response to this by clinical staff. This included the ability to target messaging to services and clinicians such as critical care outreach, junior doctors and the infection control team.
“This solution will enable us to have visibility of all deteriorating patients so that we can pro-actively intervene, improving the care, management and outcomes of patients 24/7, including out-of-hours periods and at weekends and bank holidays, when it can be particularly difficult to escalate manually.”
Key to the trust’s objectives was to improve its clinical governance processes and directly respond to the targets set by the Government, in particular the standards laid out by the Francis Report.
Dr Mark Simpson, emergency department consultant and the trust’s chief clinical information officer, said: “The trust was seeking a system to support patient safety and outcomes, which is an integral component of our IM&T strategy.
“The Nervecentre solution has everything we need, and more. It will enable us to create an environment which will enhance the user experience by removing the reliance on paper records.”
As well as the benefits from digitising the recording of observations, the solution will also allow HEY to remove the risk and inefficiency of paper-based handover meetings by ensuring that all members of a clinical team are working from a common understanding of the status of a patient.
Dr Simpson said: “By giving our team the appropriate tools we will be able to drive down response times, reduce the potential for untoward incidents, and ensure that incomplete tasks are appropriately escalated.”
Clinical engagement is expected to be high as users can personalise the information they receive, have that information be delivered to a variety of mobile devices, and access it anywhere easily and securely.
This solution will enable us to have visibility of all deteriorating patients so that we can pro-actively intervene, improving the care, management and outcomes of patients 24/7
“After careful consideration of all the options available to us, Nervecentre offered both substantially more benefits as well as a more cost-effective solution,” said Dr Simpson.
“The investment from the Nursing Technology Fund helped us to realise our vision much quicker than initially anticipated and we are looking forward to rolling this out across the trust.
Managing director of Nervecentre, Paul Volkaerts , added: “The tender process, which began in March 2013, has allowed HEY to ensure it has made the best decision to meet its ongoing vision to provide safe, high-quality effective care by ensuring efficient economic use of resources, particularly staff.
“Nervecentre is looking forward to entering into a relationship which focuses so heavily on improving patient outcomes. This is central to our ongoing strategy of improving patient safety and supports the work we are doing with other trusts across the UK.”
