Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust selects Altera Digital Health

Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust has deployed Altera Digital Health’s Sunrise electronic patient record solution across its three hospital sites to fast-track digital maturity.

The solution has been rolled out to 56 inpatient wards at Worcestershire Royal, Kidderminster Hospital and Alexandra Hospital. It is hoped the new electronic patient record (EPR) will help improve patient safety, free up staff for caring duties and reduce the length of hospital stays.

In addition, the new EPR is supporting the trust to embark on its digital transformation journey and streamlining clinical workflows.

A number of benefits have already been realised, including tracking boards improving the visibility of patients which is allowing clinicians to prioritise their patients based on clinical need. It is also seeing notes being captured in digital form, eliminating the risk of illegible entries and cutting the time spent interpreting notes.

Matthew Little, chief nursing information officer at Worcestershire Acute Hospitals, said: “Clinicians can now see every patient’s National Early Warning Score (NEWS), so more effective decisions can be made more quickly.

“Clinical time, now more than ever, is precious so being able to release time to care is really benefiting patients, improving the standards of care they are receiving.”

For doctors the fact that some patient information is auto-populated means that they can spend more time delivering care and can complete ward rounds more quickly.

The Sunrise EPR was initially piloted to three wards, before being rolled out to all adult inpatient wards over the course of four weeks.

Stuart Cooper, EPR programme director at the trust, said: “It was important for us to take a phased approach to the go-live.

“It enabled us to learn along the way to make the transition as smooth as possible, as for many staff this is their first time working digitally. As a result, we have very quickly been able to improve the baseline of our digital maturity, with minimal disruption to patient care.”

The next phase for Worcestershire Acute Hospitals is to focus on enhancing the functionality of the system; activate Sunrise EPR in the emergency and outpatients departments; as well as deploy order communications, referrals and surgery.

The trust will also go live with an electronic prescribing and medicines administration as part of the next phase of its digital transformation programme.

Towards the end of last year Medway NHS Foundation Trust went live with an electronic prescribing and medications management (ePMA) system as well as deploying Altera Digital Health’s Sunrise EPR back in 2021.