Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust deploys EPMA

As the next step in Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust’s five-year digital transformation journey, it has gone live with an Electronic Prescribing and Medicines Administration (EPMA) solution.

Provided by Altera Digital Health, part of the EPMA Trust’s Sunrise Electronic Patient Record (EPR), which goes live in June 2021. The new deployment will help improve patient flow and safety.

Doctors and nurses working on more than 50 adult inpatient wards across two hospital sites, two emergency departments and a specialist oncology center can now automatically order medicines through Sunrise. This means that they no longer need to visit a doctor or call a pharmacy to get a prescription.

Israr Baig, Associate Pharmacy Director at Gloucestershire Hospitals, said: “Improving patient safety by reducing errors was central to this live. Before EPMA was introduced, a drug may have been delivered to a patient and sent to a ward, the item may have been lost and re-delivered. Now, there is a clear record of all the supplies made to the wards, thereby preventing duplication to a great extent.

He added: “Sunrise has been integrated with EMIS, the trust’s pharmacy supply interface, which removes the need for pharmacists and pharmacy technicians to transcribe between the two systems, reducing errors.”

The system allows physicians to see where they are in the prescribing process through tracking boards. This information is available from entry to discharge and on the basis of role and function. Remote access also means that important checks can be done from anywhere.

In addition, the EPMA implementation meant that Gloucestershire Hospital was able to move to electronic discharge summaries, improving timely communication with GPs and supporting early discharges.

Dr Paul Downie, Chief Clinical Information Officer and Chief Clinical Safety Officer at Gloucestershire Hospital, said: “As well as providing safety benefits for our patients, this has enabled our operations teams to support expedited discharges. We know that discharge home is often delayed while patients wait for essential medications. Going digital has given us better visibility into who needs what and when – resulting in earlier discharges a day and better flow through our hospitals.

Less than four years ago, Gloucestershire Hospitals had the lowest digital maturity rating for a trust of its size – a 0.02 rating by HIMSS in November 2019. It has now set its sights on reaching HIMSS Phase VI at the earliest, which includes having 25% of its medicines administered and managed under a fully digital system by 2024.