NHS foundation hails e-prescribing solution

Tuesday 1st November 2011

Chesterfield Royal Hospital NHS Foundation Trust has reported the success of its deployment of JAC's Electronic Prescribing and Medicines Administration (EPMA) system.

The Trust began rolling out the system in May 2010, and it is now live in the hospital's surgical, orthopaedic and medical wards, as well as in theatres.

The Trust provides services to over 375,000 people living in and around North Derbyshire. As well as providing 24-hour accident and emergency care, the Trust also provides specialist children's services and manages a small birth centre in the Derbyshire Dales.

The EPMA system assists the Trust in reducing prescribing and administrative errors, as well as providing an effective method to facilitate auditing across the organisation.

In addition to the EPMA system, the Trust has also invested in mobile workstations, which house laptops to enable the use of EPMA to prescribe and administer medicines at patients' bedsides.

This enables staff to spend more time with patients, reducing prescribing errors and improving the patient experience.

Martin Shepherd, Head of Medicines Management at Chesterfield Royal Hospital NHS Foundation Trust said: "It is widely recognised that electronic prescribing systems improve the legibility of prescriptions and removes the possibility of prescriptions being lost or misplaced.

"The EPMA system is a reliable and effective method to help improve safety in prescribing and ensure trust-wide access to the medicines record, supporting the prescribing, administering and dispensing of medicines."

On assessment the Trust selected JAC's e-prescribing solution for its rich functionality and ability to meet its specific requirements for trust-wide deployment. The Trust aims to implement the EPMA system into its remaining wards by March 2012, including obstetrics, gynaecology, paediatrics and day surgery.

In addition to improving patient safety and reducing prescription errors, e-prescribing can also deliver significant cost savings through closer monitoring of prescriptions and medicines administration, and improve the communication between hospital departments and pharmacies, resulting in more consistent care across the Trust.

The e-prescribing system also incorporates First DataBank Multilex, the UK's leading clinical drug database, to support safe electronic prescribing with patient-specific decision support.

Chesterfield Royal Hospital

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