GPs to receive faster clinical updates on Macclesfield A&E patients

East Cheshire NHS Trust’s A&E Department can now collate and send clinical patient information to GPs electronically for all patients that attend the department.

This development complements the eDischarge Notification Forms (eDNF) to GPs – a system that has helped us achieve an 84 per cent compliance for meeting the NHS 24 hour communications delivery target.

Patient information is input into ExtraMed (the operational management and coding system for all A&E attendances) this automatically generates a discharge letter which is then stored and delivered electronically to GP practices across Cheshire. Medisec Trust eDelivery software streamlines this process.

Chris Gillespie, Service Development Manager for East Cheshire NHS Trust said: “There are approximately 1,000 attendances to the A&E Department at the trust each week. It was essential to have a system that communicated information to the patients GP that eliminated the need for clinicians to spend valuable time compiling discharge letters. This development has enabled the coding input onto the ExtraMed system to be translated into an e-discharge letterwith the key information required by the GP.”

Debi Lees, Customer Service Delivery Manager, Cheshire ICT Service said: “Patients visiting their surgery after being discharged from our A&E Department the previous day can now rest assured their GP will be fully up-to-speed with their condition and any emergency treatment they may have received. This marks another significant step in our continuing drive to improve patient care.”

Tom Rothwell, Managing Director of Medisec Software added: “By outputting patient data from ExtraMed into the MedisecTrust platform, Macclesfield District General Hospital’s A&E Department has further streamlined the transfer of patient information, automating time-consuming administration and delivering clinical information to GPs in a much more timely fashion.”