Kettering General Hospital goes live with System C’s Patient Flow software

Kettering General Hospital NHS Foundation Trust has gone live with a new real-time clinical system which aims to help better manage patient journeys through the hospital.

The trust is the first in the country to go live with System C’s Patient Flow software, a major new part of the company’s CareFlow integrated EPR.

The software features real-time feeds from the trust’s PAS and clinical systems, which provides an accurate, live picture of capacity and needs at the ward and trust level.

Dione Rogers, chief nursing information officer at Kettering, said: “Patient Flow’s large touch screen boards display all the information you need on the wards at a glance.  For the staff, it gives them a clear, easy to use framework for managing the patient from admission to discharge.  It is also making board rounds so much smoother and significantly reduces the need for paper-based records.”

Information displayed includes bed status, clinical data captured as part of the clinical workflow, outstanding tasks and discharge plans, all in one single view. It creates a real-time picture of hospital bed usage and demand and provides full visibility of expected arrivals; both elective and non-elective.

As well as touch screen whiteboards, clinical teams can access Patient Flow on mobile and desktop devices and customise their own views to display information by ward or hospital level.

Kettering initially piloted Patient Flow on two Covid-19 wards and, following a positive response, the software has now been rolled out across the whole trust.

The roll out of Patient Flow is a significant milestone in Kettering’s 10-year digital transformation plan, working in partnership with System C.

Its aim is to improve care provided to patients by delivering mobile clinical and decision-making support to clinicians, by improving the flow of patients through the 600-bed hospital and by fully digitising the patient record.

Dr Ian Denley, joint chief executive at System C, added: “We are proud to be partnering with Kettering on its digital transformation journey.  KGH [Kettering General Hospital] is a very ambitious organisation with a can-do team and it is making great strides towards becoming a digital trust.”