07.08.17
Birmingham trust rolls out innovative patient administration system
University Hospitals Birmingham NHS FT (UHB) has this week announced the launch of an innovative new patient administration system.
The trust, which runs the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, is one of 12 NHS Global Digital Exemplars who have benefited from investment in digital infrastructure and specialist training.
The system, called OceanoPAS, is the end product of a four-year project designed to develop a system tailored to the needs of the trust, and is built on a modular software system that offers an end-to-end solution to support patient care management.
OceanoPAS has already prompted positive user feedback and is quicker and easier to use than the system that was previously in place at the trust.
The integrated functionality of the system allows for greater automation of tasks and aims to improve data quality by limiting the scope for user error through a series of control.
Other benefits yielded from the new system include improved correspondence about hospital appointments and flexible options for how communications are received by patients.
Around one million patient records were transferred to the new system, which will be used by circa 1,500 staff across the trust.
“We are delighted that OceanoPAS has been rolled out across the trust – it’s very early days but to get to this point is a phenomenal achievement,” said UHB’s director of strategic operations, Kevin Bolger.
“This launch has been the culmination of many years’ hard work by a very committed team, who have faced some tough challenges.
“Implementing a new patient administration system in itself is no mean feat – the system contains all our patient activity records – demographics, appointments, waiting list entries and is the backbone of the hospital, used daily by hundreds of staff at any given point – however the team did not just implement a new system, they built one.”
Bolger also added that the demise of the National Programme for IT resulted in the trust being in control of the decision-making for its electronic patient record strategy – which gave it the opportunity to design an optimised solution.
“In creating OceanoPAS, our approach has been to make the system as intuitive as possible, to make it hard to do the ‘wrong thing’ by limiting the ability to input incorrect data or select inappropriate actions thus making it easier for our staff to do the ‘right thing’,” he continued.
“We have been able to harness the extensive knowledge and expertise of our staff – our subject matter experts – in running clinics and managing patient pathways to design a system that works for our trust.
“Although it is very early days, staff do like using the system and it is hoped that once it has fully bedded in, both the trust and patients will see the benefits.”
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