Thousands of patients are to receive safer and better coordinated care now that Yeovil District Hospital NHS Foundation Trust has gone live with InterSystems TrakCare®, a unified healthcare information system.
In a major step towards becoming paperless, Yeovil Hospital has become the first of three NHS trusts, in a regional collaboration known as SmartCare, to deploy TrakCare, with Northern Devon Healthcare NHS Trust and Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust set to follow.
With the TrakCare system already being widely deployed across Scotland’s health boards, this initiative will feature a localised edition of the technology specifically for England, which will enable hospitals to configure the system to suit local clinical needs.
Some £27.5m of benefits are expected at Yeovil Hospital alone, now that previously separate patient information systems have been replaced with TrakCare.
Phase one of the clinically led project has now been completed. Crucial information has been successfully migrated into TrakCare from the trust’s aging patient administration system, and previously isolated systems across emergency, maternity, inpatient and outpatient departments.
The new system is already delivering significant benefits across Yeovil Hospital, including improved alerting and accurate electronic capturing of clinical outcomes, which is enabling more timely actions and confidence in planning. In addition, with the ability to now track real-time bed state information, specialists can search for patients with specific conditions and free up beds. Clinical teams can access the new system directly at the point of care, and remotely.
The second phase of the TrakCare deployment has already begun, and is expected to make Yeovil Hospital one of the most digitally advanced NHS trusts in the UK. By eliminating outdated paper processes and delivering rich clinical functionality, clinicians will access all the information they need in one system, creating greater opportunities to improve the lives of patients.
Dr Anthony Smith, Chief Clinical Information Officer, Yeovil Hospital, said: “Clinical staff at the hospital have taken real ownership over TrakCare and its potential to enhance patient outcomes and join up services, playing a key role in influencing how the system works for us in practice. Having a single source of truth on the patients in our care will help us to deliver safer and more effective care based on a complete view of the patient’s journey. We already have a better view of the hospital now that the system has gone live, and patient handover between departments now flows more efficiently. As we enter into phase two, we will start to realise the real benefits of becoming a paperless hospital, with enhanced clinical functionality, electronic notes, electronic prescribing and much more.”
TrakCare will also support national drives to personalise health, manage populations and integrate health and social care.
Jason Maclellan, Chief Information Officer, Yeovil Hospital, said: “Better information is about more than efficiencies and savings. The big prize of bringing data into one place rests in the possibilities for real transformation. Our TrakCare go-live has laid the foundations for integration across the entire health economy. A single source of information will ultimately allow healthcare professionals to manage health across the entire population, spot gaps in care, and identify variation in cost and outcomes, so we can better connect with our patients and deliver services closer to their needs.”
By the end of phase two, the trust anticipates it will move closer to reaching HIMSS EMRAM Stage 7, a digital maturity rating achieved by only a select few hospitals throughout Europe.
Burdens on IT and management staff have also been reduced, so that they can better focus on the delivery of the best possible care. Legacy systems have traditionally been hosted on-site, but TrakCare is hosted for Yeovil in a managed service by InterSystems. This will allow in-house staff to free time that would have been spent on maintenance and upgrade tasks, and will improve stability of the system with smoother upgrades.
Mark Palmer, Country Manager, InterSystems UK, said: “Yeovil Hospital is already reaping significant rewards for better care now that it has gone live with TrakCare and will have one of the most clinically advanced systems anywhere in the UK on final completion of the project. TrakCare represents collaborative learning among all of our NHS customers. It is about sharing best practice, and refining our technology to real and immediate local clinical needs, so that information can be used to help clinical staff deliver the very best care to patients.”
