Specialist mental healthcare provider St Andrew’s Healthcare has introduced a new electronic prescribing and medicines administration system (ePMA) system from EMIS Health.
The provider has seen a 50% drop in prescription-related errors since rolling out the system and a reduction in nursing time spent administering drugs to patients.
The system has enabled the organisation to remove paper based charts and safely prescribe drugs with the optimal dosage and duration, as well as providing integrated support for flagging potentially incorrect prescriptions.
Kavi Gohil, Senior Pharmacist and ePMA lead at St Andrew’s Healthcare, said: “Prescribing electronically with our new system from EMIS Health has made a real difference in many different areas. There has been a more than 50% reduction in medication errors.”
“Our pharmacists now have greater governance and oversight of medicine usage. This means that we can clinically screen medicines much closer to the point of prescription, reducing risks related to dosage levels, frequency and potentially serious drug interactions. At discharge, the right medication is assigned to the right patients at the right time.”
“It’s made things much more efficient. Both doctors and nurses can make an order. Pharmacists can then see and raise the request, dispense the medication and check it electronically. Prescriptions can be sent back in one day. It has streamlined everything and made things much more structured. Doctors don’t have to write medication charts any more, which is saving a ton of paper and doctors’ time too. It has been a godsend.”
“Nurses have a 90-minute timeslot to complete drug administrations, but now they are finished in 45 minutes to an hour.”
Dr Shaun O’Hanlon, Chief Medical Officer at EMIS Group, said: “We are proud that our system is helping St Andrew’s to drive up standards of care for a vulnerable group of patients with such complex needs. At EMIS Health one of the key aims with our medicines management software is to improve clinical safety. A research report commissioned by the government in 2018 found that 230 million medication errors are made each year at an annual cost of £1.6bn: working with our customers, sophisticated eprescribing software has a vital part to play in reducing errors and improving care.”
