Durham gets paperless A&Es

County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust has gone paperless in its two A&E departments with Ascribe’s Symphony unscheduled care system.

Trust emergency clinicians record all their notes in the system’s clinical noting module, eNotes, and all nursing observations are entered into the electronic nursing record.

The system gives clinicians at the acute emergency departments at Durham University Hospital and Darlington Memorial Hospital real-time information by tracking patients from admission to discharge.

Dr Christopher Burdess, an A&E consultant at the trust, said electronic documentation was critical in ensuring that A&E clinicians had both the ability to accurately record and immediately access vital clinical information.

“The accurate capture and easy accessing of data relating to each (A&E) patient’s visit is vital in assessing our performance, and identifying areas and ways in which we can improve our service to patients,” he said.

Durham and Darlington is a long-term user of Ascribe’s CaMIS electronic patient record system. It went live with Symphony last December, which is fully integrated with the EPR.

The trust hopes this will speed up and improve the accuracy of patient registration and improve patient safety by ensuring every patient has a hospital number.

Durham and Darlington also recently signed a contract with TNT to digitise all medical records at the trust and provide a ‘scan on demand’ facility, which will scan a patient’s records when a patient visits the hospital.