25 February 2010

SystmOne to be used in Visionary New Community Hospital Service

Braintree Community Hospital, a brand new state-of-the-art hospital in Essex, will go live with SystmOne from TPP when it opens in Spring 2010.

Braintree will be operated by an NHS community healthcare organisation and private healthcare specialists working as one team within a privately managed contract to deliver services for the NHS-funded hospital.

The hospital will provide elective day surgery, minor surgery, endoscopy, therapy services, diagnostic imaging, a rapid assessment unit, 24 community beds and a range of day treatments and out-patient services. Nurses and therapists will also provide physiotherapy, speech therapy, occupational therapy and rehabilitation both at the hospital and in people's homes. Patients attending the new community hospital will be able to have a consultation, undergo diagnostic procedures and receive treatment, often on the same day.

Lisa Holmes, Project Manager, Arkanum, said:

"SystmOne will be used in the out-patients, day surgery and community beds ward, as well as by the physiotherapists and allied health professionals. We plan to take advantage of the full range of functionality available in the system, including theatres, prescribing, bed management, waiting lists, referrals, appointments, reporting, pathways and multi-resource scheduling. We aim to provide integrated pathways for patient care and will now have technology that fits our vision."

SystmOne will also interface with other systems used in the hospital for radiology, endoscopy and pathology, and will provide a link to allow visibility of TTOs at pharmacy.

Lisa continues:
"The use of a single system across the hospital will help unify our teams. Braintree is unique in that we have several third parties providing services.  Imaging, endoscopy, therapies & in-patients, and management will be provided by different parties. One of the aims of the hospital is to minimise the length of stay for each patient and keep waiting times to the bare minimum.  With SystmOne, we can schedule all the appointments a patient needs in advance, or on the day of attendance, optimising clinical contact and avoiding multiple visits.

TPP has worked with the hospital teams and Arkanum to ensure that SystmOne will fit the needs of staff and patients from day one.

Lisa comments on working with TPP:
"Throughout the project, TPP have been dynamic, keen, enthusiastic, flexible, and customer-focused.  The resources they have put on the project and the intellectual thinking they've applied is impressive. TPP's acceptance of and willingness to get involved with interfacing with the other systems has been outstanding. SystmOne is a great product, but what takes it to another level is the ability to interface with other systems, providing critical integration across pathways."

SystmOne is strategically well placed for Essex.  60% of GPs along with child health and community services in Essex already use SystmOne and so benefit from integrated care; the Braintree development allows the organisations commissioned by the PCT to maximise this investment and to take advantage of a cross-proliferation of resources such as trainers and reporting staff who are already familiar with SystmOne.

SystmOne provides the potential for patients to benefit from integrated primary and secondary care as their full and detailed patient record can be made available at both GP and consultant level. This means better communication between care settings, accurate and up-to-date information available at the point of decision and ultimately, better patient care.

Lisa Holmes, Project Manager, said:

"SystmOne will benefit local GPs, including those who do not use SystmOne, by providing them with much better and much more reliable discharge documentation. As soon as a patient is discharged, we will send the discharge summary information to the GP. Coupled with robust processes in place at the hospital, SystmOne will provide great benefit to the people of Braintree.

Where GPs also use SystmOne, there is potential to share the full patient records, making the maximum amount of information about the patient available to clinicians. The benefits of this are really quite compelling."

Dan Midgley, Customer Relationship Manager, TPP, said:
 
"We are very proud to be working with Braintree Community Hospital and think SystmOne will work well in their modern and innovative organisation.  SystmOne's functionality has been developed in conjunction with staff working in the NHS today and several Community Hospitals are already live with the system. We are always listening to their feedback and enhancing the product, ensuring that it supports both clinical and administrative work processes as well as patient management, creating a seamless patient journey from GP referral through in-patient and out-patient care, to discharge."

Note: Clinical services at Braintree Community Hospital will be provided by Braintree Clinical Services Ltd, a company owned by Arkanum.  www.arkanum.co.uk