SRC, a UK provider of clinical information and digital document creation solutions, has announced that Ealing Hospital NHS Trust in London now routinely delivers discharge summaries within 24 hours of patients leaving hospital using SRC's electronic Discharge Summary (eDS) Solution. The solution was rolled out Trust-wide to 15 wards and clinical areas in under two months. 

The solution has also enabled Ealing Hospital NHS Trust to improve patient safety and patient experience using the built-in medicine management tools. 

Clinicians at the hospital now complete accurate and legible discharge summaries electronically, which are then reviewed and authorised by pharmacists before prescriptions are dispensed. This is a paperless process. Upon patient discharge, the completed summary is automatically sent via a secure electronic link to the patient's GP practice. Patients leave the hospital with a printed copy that includes information about their medications. 

The Multilex Drugs Dictionary from First Databank is built into the solution and has been configured to pre-populate dosages for common medications and to allow only senior clinicians to prescribe certain drugs, such as chemotherapy agents. The solution also prevents the prescribing of medicines prior to the discharge assessment and notes patients' allergy status. 

Ward-based nurses can track the status of prescriptions, allowing them to plan discharges for individual patients. Patients receive written information about what their medications are treating, as well as when and how they should take them. 

Clinicians have found the solution very easy to use with the Microsoft Healthcare CUI standard compliant user interface. The solution is integrated and synchronised with the hospital Patient Administration System (PAS), updating patient records using the global standards HL7 messaging. The interface ensures that discharge summaries can be produced quickly with all the correct patient data available through one single application. 

During the implementation SRC and clinical software specialists Bluewire Technologies worked closely with the hospital's senior pharmacists and clinicians to ensure that the solution fitted hospital workflows and to tailor the built-in medicines management features. Ealing's pharmacy department deals with approximately 300 discharge prescriptions a week. 

Chief pharmacist Stuart Richardson said: "Prescriptions are now legible and clear and are being written to a standard format that complies with the contract agreed with our commissioners." 

He added: "Patient safety is a huge component of this and it has been an interesting and enjoyable process developing the medicines management features with SRC and Bluewire Technologies." 

"It's been great to engage with the designers to tailor the eDS to suit our needs, and those of other hospitals too." 

Kevin Connolly, Director of ICT at Ealing Hospital, added: "This has been a major strategic project and I am very pleased to confirm that our key investment objectives have now been enabled. The pace of implementation has been swift but this has not compromised on attention to detail, nor commitment to delivering a robust end product." 

"At the commencement of the project we had considered the major challenge to be achievement of a binding consensus around the necessary clinical/pharmacy workflows - and then to successfully reflect these decisions in the system configuration and design." 

"The system has now been live for over a month and in that time we have not encountered any significant issues, nor complaints amongst clinical staff about the burdens introduced by a new computer system. This should not be under-estimated. It is indeed the pay-off for the very detailed initial process design work undertaken by our clinical and pharmacy leads, expertly guided by the SRC and Bluewire Technologies implementation lead." 

Chris Hart, CEO at SRC, said: "Our eDS solution, part of the SRC Clinical Information Toolkit, is unique in its ability to reduce production and delivery timescales as well as significantly improving the quality and content of discharge summaries. All key objectives of the Ealing Hospital NHS Trust." 

"We are delighted by the successful and rapid rollout which the joint project team has achieved at the Ealing Hospital NHS Trust."