A team from the Royal Bournemouth and Christchurch Hospital (RBCH) are currently accessing more than a third of all the records opened by Dorset Care Record (DCR) health and social care professionals.
The Pre-admissions team have accessed around 15,000 of the 40,000 DCR examined so far, using it for every patient that they have contact with primary care to look at GP practice information.
They have found the DCR particularly useful to gain information for medications, allergies, blood pressure and other tests.
Sally Papworth, RBCH Pre-admissions team manager, said the team had in the past sometimes struggled to access blood pressure results from busy GP surgeries:
“Our team had to phone GP surgeries and it was taking up to 20 minutes to get the results. The DCR enables us to see this information immediately and this reduces pressure on both GP staff and our team.
“Having information on patient allergies is also extremely useful for us as often people forget exactly what allergy they have. This additional, real-time information ensures that patients have a safe and consistent journey through their service,” she said.
The team has only been using the DCR for the past six months, but most found the training easy to understand, particularly following the changes made in the system on information sharing.
“When the team started there was a degree of scepticism at having to learn yet another system, but now it’s a case of real frustration if the system is down. It’s made a huge difference.”
With many also using the Care and Health Information Exchange (CHIE) record in neighbouring Hampshire, staff are looking forward to enhanced communication between the two records as many RBCH patients also spend time at Southampton Hospital.
Looking ahead, the introduction of Single Sign On through the hospital’s Electronic Patient Record system will also enhance the usefulness of the DCR, said Sally: “There are currently so many different systems to log in to. Patient searches can often take too long.
Peter Gill, Dorset Care Record chairman and RBCH and Poole Hospital Director of Informatics, said: “I am very proud of the collaborative team across Dorset that has made this possible. It is excellent to see this now being used to improve our care services.
“I am really pleased that the team are very positive about the service. We are continuing to feed more data into the system to ensure that patients have a safe and slick journey through the service and that the patients should “tell their story once”.
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