Secondary Care

Leeds Teaching embeds criteria led discharge pathway into EHR

Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust has gone live with the Criteria Led Discharge (CLD) pathway, embedded into its electronic health record system.

The trust said the new pathway functionality, now part of its electronic health record (EHR) PPM+, forms part of its programme to optimise discharge processes, aiming to support patient flow and release capacity.

It means patients on the CLD pathway must meet established criteria, set by a senior medical decision maker and agreed with the patient, ahead of discharge. This involves a multidisciplinary team to verify the criteria has been met, and once confirmed, a patient can be discharged, to ‘avoid the need to rely on a final review by the responsible or on-call medical teams’.

The EHR at Leeds, now includes a new dashboard for the pathway process, including a timeline view and automatic reminders of outstanding actions.

Paul Jones, Chief Digital Information Officer, Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, said: “At Leeds Teaching Hospitals we develop and manage our electronic health record system, PPM+, in house. One of the many benefits of this approach is that our development team is integrated into the trust, working closely alongside our clinicians. This means we can prioritise our development activities around the needs of our clinical community, enabling us to respond quickly and deliver the functionality that matters the most.

“Embedding the CLD pathway functionality into PPM+ ensures all information can be easily and quickly accessed by clinical colleagues across the organisation, using a system they are already familiar with, so this really is a fantastic achievement.”

In October, HTN caught up with Guy Dickie, Associate Director of Digital at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, to discuss digital programmes at the trust, including a new data platform, its Patient Administration System, Project ‘Paper Lite’ and a new approach to managing projects.