Newchurch Launches E-Booking Module

Newchurch Limited  has announced the launch of the e-booking module of its Primary Care Information Solution (PCIS). The new e-booking tool is said to provide patients with a more responsive service and save time and money by reducing missed appointments.

Developed by Newchurch’s Belgium-based partner, e-scheduling specialistUltraGenda , the e-booking module will enable healthcare professionals to book appointments for patients at the point of care – the Government has set the target for e-booking to be available across the NHS by 2005.

Newchurch’s PCIS e-booking module is said to provide a building block towards integrated patient care pathways. It will save time for both patient and primary care organisations (PCOs) such as PCTs, reducing administrative effort and wasted financial resource that results from missed appointments and poor quality appointment notes.

The module is designed to support PCT-wide booking, scheduling and assignment of a care pathway for specific patients. Future developments will allow appointments to be booked across the whole NHS, breaking down boundaries between primary and secondary care.

Kingsley Manning, chief executive of Newchurch Limited described the e-booking module as an exciting and necessary addition to Newchurch’s PCIS: “The key to delivering a better service to patients and improving their experience of the NHS, is integration across the health and care community. We need to move towards a point where patients with specific conditions have a clearly defined care pathway, across the whole health continuum.”

The e-booking module will enable PCTs to request appointments based on practitioner, appointment type, time frame, number of appointments and cancellation. Because the system is entirely rules-based it can be easily configured locally, enabling PCTs to assign access rights and privileges to authorised users.

As the e-bookings module is fully integrated with the electronic patient record within the PCIS it is easy to search, find and update appointments through the patient index, without leaving the one PCIS application.

Hugo Schellens, general manager of UltraGenda commented: “UltraGenda’s e-booking solution changes the way that PCO’s and patients interact to schedule appointments. Based on web services technology, it integrates seamlessly with the main clinical and administrative modules of Newchurch’s PCIS, enabling the PCO to identify the specific requirements of the patient and allocate the right resource.”