In accordance with NICE guidelines, Barnsley Hospital NHS Foundation Trust needed to develop a way of identifying newly admitted patients and their locations within the hospital. In effect a real time patient tracking tool was required allowing patient identification and the subsequent evidencing of medicines reconciliation data capture.
Barnsley Hospital NHS Foundation Trust collated live datasets from their EPR and built the infrastructure meeting requirements of producing a real-time tool to be used to direct pharmacy resource to the patient’s bedside, ensuring timely delivery of care and reports on performance associated with the timeliness of medicines reconciliation, providing a one-stop-shop for medicines reconciliation process and performance.
Once the dashboard and eForm was deployed, time was spent verifying the accuracy of the novel tool – built using generic Microsoft-based software – before full roll-out to the department.
It’s portable to other organisations that use a conventional paper audits to understand performance against medicines reconciliation targets; usage of the tool widens the scope of improvements in patient care and operational efficiency.
The Trust improved visibility of medicines reconciliation requirements of patients; an improved and more efficient operational delivery is pivotal to demonstrably high-level of performance. They identified improvements in efficiency of the ward based pharmacy teams who can quickly locate recently admitted patients, using the live data feed provided by the dashboard, providing up-to-the minute access to admissions and patient movements and are abreast of medicines reconciliation requirements, and can therefore deliver high-quality patient care.
Because this solution was created using standardised methods in a data warehouse environment, data captured for medicines reconciliation is used to inform ward staff of the current status of a patient’s pathway of care e.g. deploying a ward-based dashboard tool that provides a holistic view of any patient’s status (as extracted from multiple clinical systems), inclusive of medicines reconciliation.
Ward staff are reassured they’re meeting national guidelines regarding drug histories when the dashboard updates automatically upon completion of an eForm after med recs have taken place.
They’re now deploying similar techniques to produce a Cancer Pathways and Performance Tracker, using live data from our cancer system to track patients through their pathways and identify bottlenecks in the care process, which will improve access to treatment and clinical outcomes.
