Macclesfield District General Hospital achieves 84% hit rate for 24 hour discharge communications delivery
Macclefield District General Hospital is hitting the 24 hour NHS target for the delivery of Discharge Notification Forms to GP practices in 84 per cent of cases.
Following the installation of a ground breaking electronic linek up with 56 Cheshire GPs last year, the hospital has seen dramatic improvements in both the speed of delivery and the quality of clinical updates.
Designed by Medisec Software, the system allows East Cheshire NHS Trust to collate vital clinical information on the ward and to forward it to GPs as a patient leaves the hospital.
The technology was rolle out across the trust in 2010 and, with more than 200 clinicians now inputting directly onto the system, has produced excellent results. Eighty-four per cent of the electronic discharge notification forms being produced are now being made available to GPs within the 24 hour target.
Chris Gillespie, Service Development Manager, Medical Business Unit at East Cheshire NHS Trust commented: “The introduction and development of eDNF has assisted the Trust to achieve our commissioning requirements and avoided considerable penalties associated with non compliance.”
Referring to the Royal College of Physicians for guidance on content, the Trust working with Central and Eastern Cheshire PCT created a template with pre-agreed content for all patient discharge communications.
Hospital staff are mandated to complete all the boxes with relevant content before the software automatically generates a Discharge Notification Form for electronic delivery direct to the relevant surgeries.
Debi Lees, Customer Service Deliver Manager, Cheshire ICT Service explains: “GPs need as much relevant and detailed information as possible to offer the best quality of care, yet they often have to take over the care of patients who have had a major illness with very scant details.
“Now a patient can be discharged from Macclesfield District General Hospital and visit their GP for follow up care the next day and the GP will be fully up-to-speed with critical developments at the hospital, such as new medication or test results.”
By capturing accurate medication information when a patient enters the hospital and during their stay, the initial eDNF is so comprehensive that, in many cases, a follow up letter is now no longer required.
Tom Rothwell, Managing Director of Medisec Software adds:”With Medisec, the hospital can get clear, legible and relevant clinical information to GPs in a much more timely way than they were previously. As information is captured electronically, it removes the need to issue a formally dictated letter – usually about six weeks later – so it saves on secretarial time and cost too.”
