CUSTOMER: Lothian NHS Board (Lothian)
CHALLENGE: Address difficulties achieving a single, up-to-date view of patient activity including referral and attendance details, diagnostic test requests and results, treatment details and comprehensive discharge information.
OUTCOME: A single deployment of InterSystems TrakCare allowed Lothian to support all four acute care hospitals and several specialist facilities
Lothian NHS Board (Lothian) operates four main acute hospitals – the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, the Western General Hospital, the Royal Hospital for Sick Children, and St. John’s Hospital – plus primary and community services for a population of 800,000 in and around Edinburgh, Scotland. In a typical year, Lothian generates 137,000 inpatient admissions, 551,000 outpatient attendances, 170,000 accident and emergency (A&E) attendances, 105,000 day cases, 480,000 radiology exams, and 8 million laboratory tests.
The Challenge: A Single View of a Patient's records
Like many healthcare organizations with multiple facilities, each with its own electronic and paper-based patient record systems, NHS Lothian found it impossible to achieve a single, up-to-date view of patient activity. “We wanted to implement a single, integrated Patient Management System,” says Martin Egan, e- Health Director at Lothian. “The solution needed to capture and present all information relating to an individual patient – referral and attendance details, diagnostic test requests and results, treatment details, and comprehensive discharge information.”
The Solution: A single instance of TrakCare
Lothian met these goals by deploying a single instance of InterSystems TrakCare® supporting all four acute hospitals and a number of specialist facilities across the region.
The TrakCare solution has helped Lothian to:
- Allow practitioners to refer patients to hospitals electronically through interoperability with the Scottish National e-Referrals service.
- Increase the use of NHS Scotland national patient numbering conventions by provision of a single patient index within TrakCare and integration with the Scottish National Demographic database.
- Meet Emergency Department waiting time targets by efficient admission, triage, and the use of visual alerts to ensure prompt attention to patients.
- Provide complete and accurate patient information to authorized care professionals at all Lothian locations, reducing duplicate data entry and enhancing overall care.
- Implement electronic ordering of lab tests and radiology investigations including transcription of radiology reports and clinician access to PACS images.
- Securely exchange patient information including diagnostic results and clinical correspondence for use within the wider healthcare community.
- Increased efficiency
- Provide comprehensive care
- More secure exchange of patient information
Conclusion: Comprehensive Care with a Single Product
TrakCare is being used by more than 12,000 Lothian staff in A&E, inpatient, outpatient, radiology, and maternity settings and is now being deployed to support community healthcare staff. “In the past, it would have been necessary to buy separate systems for us to support these different departments,” says Egan.
“Today, TrakCare helps us to provide comprehensive care for our patients with a single product. The ability to extend the benefits of a single Patient Management System from the acute environment into the community is a real advantage.”
TrakCare is not offered in the United States.
