Current Filter: Document>>>>>>

   

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 as it 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. They have many modern community based resource centres and clinics to provide local services to local people where possible.

ADDRESSING PRIORITIES
The Trust had a five year plan to join-up information across the organisation; this included multiple systems and users, with key priorities being:

• Patient Safety
• Quality of Care
• Security
• Efficiency
• Carbon Footprint
• Cost Savings

With these priorities in mind, the overarching goal was to provide a single 'unified patient 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. They started by implementing a clinical pilot project in 2009 and this was 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 they 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.

Through the use of the innovative Fortrus solution, Unity, which they describe as "the worlds first Unified Health Viewer", SEPT are already well on the way to meeting many of the requirements for Digital Care Plans, and will exceed all requirements ahead of 2015.

Across the NHS the Fortrus Integrated Digital Care Record offering is enabling collaboration between healthcare experts by providing a single view of the patient record. By using the Fortrus collaboration module, teams of experts can discuss a patient case at the same time whilst dynamically recording observations and actions into the record, then instantly sharing this with colleagues. Fortrus bring innovation to Multi Disciplinary Team Meetings by providing large screen collaboration tools so that everyone in the room can see exactly what's happening with every patient they review.

Fortrus has a solid pedigree in the healthcare sector: they boast of being the only organisation to have achieved BS 10008 compliance with an on-site embedded scanning bureau within an NHS hospital. In addition the company has over 20 years experience of digitising paper records and developed its groundbreaking Electronic Medical Record solution (Mobius) by working collaboratively with many hundreds of clinicians.

EVERYTHING IN ITS PLACE
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".

Page   1  2