South West London and St George's Mental Health NHS Trust has gone live with a series of newly digitised patient management processes.
It has completed a two-month implementation of the Flow patient management solution from software company Servelec.
This has replaced the trust’s previous patient management processes, which involved manually ringing around hospitals for updates on bed availability, handwritten notes on whiteboards, and then duplication of entry as the same notes needed to be entered into the electronic patient record (EPR).
It is now piloting the system on a number of wards before rolling it out across all wards by the end of the year
The trust, which serves people across five London boroughs, was already a user of Servelec’s Rio EPR software, which integrates with Flow.
Need for standardisation
Amallia Thomas, the trust’s transformation project manager, said: “One of the main reasons we asked Servelec to install its Flow product was that there was no standardisation across the trust – we would do our ward handovers at the end of the shift, using multiple processes such as Microsoft Word, Excel, or even physical paper, which could be time consuming.
“Now we have Flow, we have an up to date view of every bed from every ward. We’re able to see how many beds are occupied, and which ones are free. We also have a full view of the patient journey, which greatly improves the patient experience.”
Image from GOV.UK, Open Government Licence v3.0
