Electronic developments at Ashford and St. Peter’s will benefit patients and staff 

Projects to support faster and better patient care at Ashford and St. Peter’s Hospitals are being introduced over the next year:

• The 18 week target will speed up the journey for patients through the healthcare system.
• Greater emphasis on using the national ‘Choose and Book’ system will enable patients to have more control over when and where they attend hospital with the benefit of reducing the number of appointments which patients fail to attend.
• Introduction of the National Care Records Service (CRS) and electronic document management system (EDM) in 2008 will improve record keeping and reduce reliance on paper systems. 

18 Weeks Referral to Treatment

Trust staff are now working hard to review services and develop plans to ensure that patients who are referred by their GP are seen and treated within 18 weeks.   Since the NHS Plan was published in July 2000, there have been significant improvements in reducing the length of time patients wait for treatment.   Under the plan the next milestone is to achieve the target of no one waiting more than 18 weeks from referral to the start of definitive treatment by December 2008.   To ensure that the December target is achieved an interim target of 85 to 90 per cent achieved within 18 weeks by March 2008 has been set.   This means that any patient referred to Ashford and St. Peter’s from 27th October 2007 must be on an ‘18 week pathway’.

Deputy Director of Operations at Ashford and St. Peter’s Hospitals, Joanne Edwards, says: “Currently 27 per cent of in-patients and 46 per cent of day case and other patients are treated within 18 weeks.   We have some way to go to achieve the national targets.   A fundamental review of how we organise services at the Trust has started and we are looking to follow national best practice to achieve the targets on time with minimal additional resources available.  Although this is challenging, we have the success of our work on cancer to build on.”

‘Choose and Book’

“A significant number of the patients who use services provided by Ashford and St. Peter’s Hospitals choose to do so,” says Ian Mackenzie, Director of Performance, Information and Facilities.  “After referral by their GP patients should be given a choice of four NHS and one private hospital.    We fully support an increase in the number of patients who are given this opportunity to choose the hospital they want to be treated at.   By the end of March 2007, 32 per cent of all referrals to us were made under the Choose and Book scheme.   The ability of patients to choose the location, date and time of their first appointment with us has the benefit of convenience for the patient and cuts down on the number of patients who fail to attend their appointments.”

Work on analysing the effect of Choose and Book has led to Ashford and St. Peter’s being used as a case study for the Connecting for Health programme – the body responsible for delivering electronic systems across the NHS.   The study shows significant reductions for ‘Did Not Attend’ (DNA) rates for patients referred through Choose and Book when compared to the traditional paper method.   Other work at Ashford and St. Peter’s to reduce DNA rates includes an automatic patient textingreminder service which is being piloted in paediatrics.  

"By eliminating the paper referral process, Choose and Book allows us to review referrals at a greater turnaround,” says Dr. David Fluck, Consultant Cardiologist at Ashford and St. Peter’s Hospitals NHS Trust.  “This is a huge improvement because it cuts out the time consuming administration processes of old, ensuring that patients are treated more quickly.  We now plan to work on our Directory of Service (DOS) to ensure that GPs understand which tests can be ordered prior to a patients referral, thus saving even more time in the patients pathway.”

Care Records Service

The first phase of the national NHS Care Records Service is already live at Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust and linked community hospitals together with outlying clinics across East Surrey. It is expected that the system, along with electronic document management, will be introduced at Ashford and St. Peter’s during 2008.   A lot of the preparatory work has been put in place with many staff already registered for the secure chip and pin ‘smart cards’ required to access the new system, introductory training sessions and plans for system testing are being agreed.

Director of Performance, Information and Facilities, Ian Mackenzie, comments: “The NHS Care Records Service is an important development for the NHS both locally and nationally.   Patients who have their care at Ashford and St. Peter’s but happen to be travelling and need hospital care elsewhere in Surrey or further afield will be able to rest easy knowing that the record of their previous health care is easily and securely available to the doctor or nurse treating them.   If patients are unconscious and no one is able to tell staff about allergies or previous treatment this information could be critical to the care of that individual.”

Mr Mackenzie continued: “The new system will also have the benefit of reducing the amount of paper being used at Ashford and St. Peter’s – speeding up care and reducing costs.   We have a good track record at implementing new systems at Ashford and St. Peter’s.   Both patients and staff are now benefiting from the recently installed picture archiving communications system (PACS) which enables x-rays and scans to be viewed anywhere in the Trust.   This too is the subject of a case study, by VAIO.”