Accenture and The Phoenix Partnership (TPP) have delivered the first phase of digitizing patient records across nine National Health Service (NHS) systems in the Southern Community and Child Health Procurement consortium, supporting community hospitals, children’s health, mental health and minor injuries units.
“Electronic health records for community and child health services in the south will help improve safety, speed up care and help make sure the NHS gives the best services to patients, said UK Health Minister Dan Poulter, M.D. “We want the NHS to continue to make progress and develop local solutions so that more health service organizations within the system can benefit from taking patient information from notepad to secure, comprehensive electronic records.”
The first phase of the Accenture-TPP effort included the clinical implementation of an electronic patient record system, called SystmOne, for clinicians to access and exchange health information across the various care settings in the NHS. Dorset Healthcare University NHS Foundation Trust was the first to fully launch TPP’s SystmOne platform, which is being used initially by more than 500 clinicians. The Trust will continue to work with Accenture over the next few months to roll out the system to its broader community teams.
“We are excited to be the first to launch this technology, and our staff is enthusiastic about its implementation. The introduction of a patient administration system is a huge leap forward for both patients and staff. It will enable greater coordination of care, reduce the burden of paperwork and streamline our clinical and administration processes,” said Val Graves, director of community health services, Dorset Healthcare in the announcement.
Accenture and TPP will continue working with the NHS health systems to deploy TPP’s SystmOne platform beyond the 300 health service organizations that are actively using the platform in South England. Accenture and TPP also will deliver deployment support, application integration, data migration, hosting and ongoing technical support.
“This digital health system will help support community and child health service providers across southern England,” said Aimie Chapple, managing director for Accenture’s health business in the United Kingdom. “We are providing better access to patient data and enabling the sharing of clinical information, combined with a new mobile capability. As a result, patients will benefit from safer care, greater care coordination and connected health, and they will be able to engage more effectively in tracking their own health.”
As part of the effort, Accenture and TPP will deploy a patient record system across the nine NHS systems that are part of the Southern Community and Child Health Procurement consortium, which extends from Kent in the East to Cornwall in the West, including Sirona Care & Health, Gloucestershire Care Services NHS Trust, Plymouth, Community Healthcare, Kent Community Health NHS Trust, Peninsula Community Health, Dorset Healthcare University Foundation Trust, East Sussex Healthcare Trust, Sussex Community Trust and Swindon-based SEQOL social enterprise.
Currently, the NHS has more than 200,000 clinicians actively using TPP’s SystmOne to access and exchange 30 million patient records across 5,000 NHS and social care organizations. SystmOne also is being used by its first acute trust and specialist social care clients in England.