The introduction of the Dorset Care Record to the Royal Bournemouth Hospital’s Acute Medical Unit (AMU) will bring about greater transparency and consistency for clinical doctors and registrars and clarity for GPs and social care practitioners.
There are approximately 55 patients admitted to the AMU every day with the unit dealing with large number of elderly people suffering from a range of serious, non-surgical ailments, including chest pains and breathlessness.
Dr Michael Wheble, RBH AMU consultant for the past two years, believes the DCR will be particularly beneficial for the unit’s out of hours service:
“We currently have no means of accessing GP records in Dorset whatsoever, which means for out of hours, there is no reliable way to access primary or secondary care information.
“Many of our elderly patients don’t remember the drugs that they on and don’t know their medical history. If they’ve been in our hospital before we will have records but if they’re new to the area and haven’t visited us before we won’t have any records about them or their next of kin.
Dr Wheble said that even during the working day it was often tricky to access information quickly from GP practices.
“Getting information from GP’s can be time-consuming We often have to fax through details to surgeries to prove who we are before we can get records. It will sometimes take up to threequarters of an hour a day to do this and get the basic information, which isn’t right with the amount of IT available. The situation is even harder when accessing community care information.”
Dr Wheble has signed up to be an early adopter of the DCR, which he believes will offer greater transparency and consistency to his work. “It is vitally important information is available rapidly and 24 hours a day so that if a patient arrives at 11pm the consultant knows their full medical history.
“The DCR will not only benefit us in terms of saving time and providing more accurate and consistent care but also GP’s and social services. Only this week, I had a GP complaining that he could not see the results of a test we had undertaken. The system needs to talk to each other and the DCR will benefit social care practitioners providing them with transparent and relevant information.”
“Getting information from social services is incredibly challenging and delays in understanding the community care that is available can lead to patients being kept in hospital for longer than necessary.”
“I believe the DCR will make a real difference but I need every GP, occupational therapist and physio to be able to have a licence and access to help provide a seamless and professional service for patients,” he added.
The RBH AMU unit takes patients from Bournemouth, Christchurch and east Dorset but also a range of communities in east Hampshire, including Ringwood and Lymington.