Wirral ranked as one of the best hospitals for using technology to improve patient care
Calvin Barnett 23rd January 2019 Wirral ranked as one of the best hospitals for using technology to improve patient care2019-07-10T10:34:04+00:00 AT Services News, Awards, Charities & organisations, Innovative tech, Newsroom, NHS, Public sector news
Wirral University Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (WUTH) has been named among the 'Most Wired' hospitals in the world for 2018, in a ranking published by the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME).
The programme recognises hospitals and health systems that are at the forefront of digital care and how effectively they use technology to deliver a high-quality patient service.
As a recognised Global Digital Exemplar (GDE) organisation by NHS England, WUTH is one of the most digitally enabled NHS organisations in the country. Called 'Digital Wirral', the programme aims to harness innovative technology available in the industry to transform the way health and social care services are planned and delivered.
WUTH has worked hard over the past few years to implement a wide portfolio of Cerner solutions across the organisation and maximise the functionality of its Electronic Patient Record (EPR), powered by Cerner Millennium. These improvements have been the basis for many local developments to support infection control, safeguarding, document retrieval and electronic referrals.
The state-of-the-art integrated EPR provides clinicians with sophisticated decision support that helps minimise potential medical errors, resulting in better patient outcomes. It also means the organisation is able to provide an enhanced experience for patients and clinicians, including shorter inpatient stays and better use of valuable resources such as clinical time.
Additionally, WUTH has implemented its Patient Portal, which is being used by patients being treated for colorectal, urological or breast cancer to reduce the number of follow-up outpatient appointments they need after completing their cancer treatment.
The announcement of WUTH being ranked amongst the 'Most Wired' hospitals in the world comes only a few months after the organisation celebrated its first anniversary as a GDE site, and with that, some of the achievements and progress made over the past year.
One of WUTH's recent accomplishments is the implementation of the Wirral Care Record (WCR). As part of the system-wide Healthy Wirral partnership – a ground-breaking population health approach that uses Cerner's intelligence platform, HealtheIntent – WUTH and its partners have developed a single longitudinal record covering nearly 330,000 people living across the Wirral area in North West England.
The programme is also underpinned by Cerner's Health Information Exchange (HIE) technology to connect information and safely share it with health and social care providers involved in the patient journey.
The WCR is helping care providers and commissioners in Wirral to know their population and identify risks, and apply clinical recommendations to the public to help engage them and keep them healthy.
"Over the last decade we have been working really hard to build on existing technology and adopting new clinical IT systems to enhance patient care and provide a state of art decision support system for all care teams in Wirral," said Paul Charnley, Director of IT and Information for Wirral University Teaching Hospitals.
"We are optimising clinical pathways that revolutionise workflows inside the hospital and change the way care is delivered, supporting new care models. We are honoured to have received this prestigious recognition and we will continue to support all our clinical staff with cutting edge technology that enables us to provide a better, safer and smarter care"
Cerner Millennium, College of Healthcare Information Management Executives, digital care, Global Digital Exemplar, Healthy Wirral partnership, hospital care, innovative tech, Most Wired award, Most Wired hospital, NHS, NHS England, NHS foundation trust, online care, patient care, Wirral University Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, WUTH
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