Nottingham Live with System C’s Orders and Results

Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust (NUH), one of the biggest and busiest acute Trusts in England, has successfully deployed System C’s orders and results system to handle around 4,000 orders and 38,000 results per day.

Staff are using the Medway Order Communications system for radiology, pathology and other diagnostic ordering and result viewing at Nottingham City Hospital and Queen’s Medical Centre (QMC). An average of over 20,000 orders are being placed per week, with 1,123 of those in the first 24 hours. The new solution is part of the Trust’s Medway EPR, and replaces its in-house NotIS order communications system.

The integrated orders and results software is designed to provide an efficient and safe mechanism for electronically ordering and receiving results. It allows healthcare professionals to benefit from faster, more efficient requesting, viewing and messaging of clinical information. It paves the way for electronic result acknowledgement, due to be introduced in the summer.

Dr Jeremy Lewis, Consultant in Acute Medicine and Chief Clinical Information Officer at NUH, said: “Clinicians have taken to the system quickly and are already benefiting from an improved user experience. A big element of the success is Medway’s ability to integrate seamlessly with other clinical systems. From within a patient’s record on Medway we have contextual links to NotIS (for reviewing historical results), our Digital Health Record system (for reviewing scanned documents and letters), CareCentric (our shared record system) and our PACS system, all without having to log on or search for the patient separately).”

NUH has introduced the system as part of its drive towards paperless 2020 and to improve patient safety by strengthening the management of results.

A key feature of System C’s order communications system is its flexible results views, including lists, grids and graphing, which allow clinicians to review information in a manner that maps to their workflow. Its summary views provide immediate access to important information, including what orders have been placed and their result statuses. In addition, the software automatically records when a result has been viewed, and will allow results acknowledgement when this goes live.

Dr Lewis added:

These features will help release cost savings (through improved visibility of previous investigations and intelligent decision support in the ordering process), as well as providing reassurance that important results are not being overlooked.

Markus Bolton, Joint Chief Executive of System C, said:

We have recently rebuilt our order communications system and this is one of several Trusts to go-live with the new version. It’s great to see the software bedding in so quickly and it being used to the Trusts’ benefit.

In addition to System C’s PAS/EPR, NUH uses the company’s maternity, business intelligence, self-check in kiosks and shared care modules.