New patient flow systems to transform outpatient support in Colchester

Colchester Hospital University NHS Foundation Trust has invested over £210,000 in new patient flow technology to support its outpatient transformation strategy.

The investment will see the Trust go live with patient management software including an electronic patient dashboard that will allow its staff to track the location and status of patients over the duration of their appointment.

Further additions will see the introduction of an electronic recording system for patient appointment outcomes as the Trust looks to replace paper outcome forms and reduce manual data input.

The hardware and software solutions will be delivered by Cirencester-based patient flow management specialist, Intouch with Health, whose IT-based solutions help healthcare providers to increase organisational efficiency and deliver an improved patient experience.

Darren Atkins, Associate Director of IT at the Trust comments: “In order to support our outpatient transformation strategy, we have chosen to deploy a fully integrated patient flow management solution encompassing self-service patient check-in, an electronic patient calling system and electronic outcome recording in certain outpatient areas across the Trust.

“The solution will allow patients to register their arrival in the clinic, as well as view and update or provide their demographic data, and electronic patient calling will allow clinical staff to call patients directly from consulting rooms and clinic rooms by activating calling on display screens.”

Atkins concludes: “The solution has been integrated with our System C Medway patient administration system (PAS) to ensure that patient information and records are instantly updated, and that no data is ‘lost’ between the check-in kiosks and our PAS.”

Intouch’s product set takes a holistic approach to patient flow management and delivers key benefits for all levels of hospital management and patients. Benefits include a reduction of patient check-in queues, a reduction in ‘Did Not Attend’ appointments due to increased data capture accuracy, efficient and on time clinics with reduced paper chase, a reduction in lost income due to incomplete or misplaced paper outcome forms and increased Trust competitiveness through adoption of innovative IT contributing to meeting QIPP and CQUIN targets.

More than 80 NHS Hospitals in the UK currently use part or all of the Intouch patient flow product set.