Case Study

Improving nursing assessments productivity and usability

East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust (ELHT) is working towards an integrated Electronic Patient Records (EPR) system. It needed a solution that would not only improve nursing assessments productivity and usability now, but also evolve to work with its EPR and other future systems.

ELHT worked with ExtraMed to deploy our Nursing Assessments solution to enhance assessments, support staff, improve handovers, and increase data flow. The Trust provides high quality acute secondary healthcare for the people of East Lancashire, Blackburn and Darwen. ELHT employs 8,500 staff, has more than 1,000 beds and treats 700,000 patients a year across five hospitals – Royal Blackburn Teaching Hospital, Burnley General Teaching Hospital, Clitheroe Community Hospital, Accrington Victoria Hospital and Pendle Community Hospital – and various community sites.

Improve productivity, usability and integration

The objective was to replace an existing nursing assessments system. It was frequently unavailable and didn’t offer an intuitive user experience for staff. At times it was a struggle to complete assessments in a timely manner. It was also yet another system in the Trust’s estate which only did one thing, one more different system to log-onto and learn. The Trust wanted something better – specifically a solution that would integrate with others, particularly their existing ExtraMed Patient Flow system (which tracks the journey of patients through the Trust).

Nursing assessments productivity up 100%

The end result is a system that supports nursing staff in providing care and in achieving better outcomes for patients. Ultimately the project was successful because of the strong clinical engagement which characterised it from start to finish. The combined IT, clinical and ExtraMed team improved the nursing assessments forms for ease-of-use and compliance with agreed models. This has resulted in a “100% improvement in productivity around nursing assessments”.