Leeds and York partnership NHS FT has gone live with a new Electronic Patient Record (EPR) system during the COVID-19 pandemic. They will be using cloud-based CareDirector from Advanced, formerly known as CareWorks which was acquired by Advanced in November 2019. The care provider has over 3,000 staff serving Leeds and York as well as the north of England.
WHY IT MATTERS
The new system has enabled 1,300 staff to work remotely and effectively from home, with all training delivered via Teams and Zoom during the pandemic. A 24/7 virtual support desk was created the week before going live, with ramped up capacity due to reduced floorwalkers.
The solution ensures all patients’ data can be recorded and accessed in one place, enabling clinicians and staff to access live health information and inform the care they deliver.
THE LARGER TREND
In June, Royal Surrey and Ashford and St Peter NHS FT implemented a joint EPR system, powered by Cerner Millennium. Also in June, Manchester University NHS FT signed a £181m contract with Epic to provide an EPR system aimed to simplify the process of providing patient information.
ON THE RECORD
Bill Fawcett, chief information officer at Leeds and York Partnership NHS FT, said: “CareDirector has helped us to swiftly respond to COVID-19. We have been able to move our staff to working from home in just a few days, build real-time trust-wide dashboards of COVID-19 cases and redeploy staff while ensuring they rapidly have the access to information they would need for their new roles.
“In addition, we have reduced the revenue costs of the trust’s core clinical records by 25% and integrated the system with four other key systems in the Cloud.”
