Powerchart Oncology which is developed by Cerner, offers Wirral University Hospital greater support when planning chemotherapy for blood cancer patients. It offers the Trust complete control over prescribing, clinical documentation, pharmacy verification, administration and discharge of haematology patients. WUTH is the first Trust in the UK to use Cerner Oncology technology to help improve the care provided to its patients.
Powerchart Oncology enhances patient safety by providing an automatic calculation of the medication dosage. It also enhances the clinical checks carried out before chemotherapy is administered and adds extra assurance by ensuring certain tasks can only carried out by colleagues trained in those areas. The resulting digital patient record can be monitored by all members of their care team.
Barbara Hammer, Consultant Haematologist at WUTH, said: ‘’The whole chemotherapy prescribing process is now much more efficient as the system captures the entire chemotherapy process from prescribing, pharmacy checking and administration by our nurses. It also includes electronic scheduling of all appointments and the automatic generation of clinic letters to the patients General Practitioner which contain all the required information to enable optimal integrated care as GPs are now always fully informed about all aspects of their patients’ chemotherapy treatment.
“Relevant blood results, chemotherapy related side effects, changes in patients’ weight and any previous chemotherapy dose changes are clearly visible to everybody involved in the chemotherapy process. Abnormal results which require chemotherapy dose changes are always flagged up and all chemotherapy doses are calculated electronically which reduces human error through the use of a strictly automated process.
“The system also includes electronic referrals for counselling appointments with our clinical nurse specialists, procedures such as bone marrow examinations and for weekly multi-disciplinary team meetings during which patients’ results are discussed and treatments are planned. Some of these referrals are even generated automatically at the end of the chemotherapy course. Prior to the implementation of Powerchart Oncology all these referrals were done on paper which was much more time consuming and a lot less organised.
“We started using Powerchart Oncology at the beginning of February 2017, building and testing period and the whole chemotherapy process has already been transformed in a very positive way. We are expecting further improvements in the future as we are continuously evaluating and developing the system.’’
