St Vincent’s ED announces intention to go paperless

St Vincents Hospital

The move towards an EPR aims to significantly reduce the current clerical workload shared by the ED multidisciplinary team. When complete, it should enable physicians to record their notes electronically with tablet devices at the bedside and automatically generate discharge letters and prescriptions, in the process optimising the legibility and quality of medical records.

The fully customisable software will extend the Department’s functionality to include integrated care pathways, nursing triage and assessment/reassessment documentation, early warning score system and clinical hand-overs, in preparation for the move to a paperless environment.
To integrate care outside the hospital, the new ED module is to be extended later this year to St Michael’s Hospital in Dún Laoghaire, which is part of the St Vincent’s Healthcare Group.

St Vincent’s further plans to generate electronic messaging of discharge summaries and clinical records to allow continuity of care into the primary sector, according to the hospital, which recently upgraded its 14-year-old existing IMS MAXIMS ED information system to help clinicians safely manage patient pathways while improving efficiency.

The hospital has seen significant rises in emergency admissions from just over the 33,500 attendance mark back in 2002, when the system was first installed, to around 50,000 annually for the past two years.

Live since November 2015 following SVUH’s move to its new and larger ED, the new version of the IMS MAXIMS system fully integrates with other hospital systems and provides a comprehensive suite of reporting analytical tools, and facilitates the sharing of information across the hospital’s departments and will underpin the ED for years to come. It also facilitates communication with patients and other healthcare providers such as GPs.

The ED package allows real-time tracking of a patient journey through the Department and provides an instant overview of a patient’s status and now measures key performance targets set by the HSE, such as patient experience times.

Consultant in Emergency Medicine Prof John Ryan commented: “The tracking system is highly valuable for ourselves and visiting physicians in locating patients in an environment where there can at times be in excess of 100 patients being cared for.

“In a data-driven Department where we place so much emphasis on audit and research, the search facilities and report generation give us comprehensive access to information on our business, allowing us to plan staffing and resources that matches demand,” added Prof Ryan.

lloyd.mudiwa@imt.ie