University Hospitals Sussex to implement a care coordination platform

University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust has partnered with System C to implement a care coordination platform with the aim of joining up care across multiple hospital sites.

The new trust is formed from the merger of Western Sussex Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust. It runs five main hospital sites with 1,767 beds and around 20,000 staff, caring for 1.8 million people in Sussex.

To help link up care, University Hospital Sussex will roll out CareFlow Connect.  This will create networks which will allow secure patient-identified communications to take place between care teams across all five hospital sites.

Clinicians will use the system to manage paperless referral and team-to-team conversations between different sites so patients can be referred to any hospital within the trust.

Work on the full integration of trust patient management and electronic record systems has already started and is due to complete towards the end of 2022.

Rob Haigh, medical director at the trust, said: “We are off to a great start with our digital strategy and plans for integrating care for patients across Sussex by giving clinicians the tools to support the complex patient flows between our hospitals.

“The implementation has started, and we are working towards an initial go-live by the autumn.”

The contract was awarded using NHSX’s new clinical communications framework, a procurement framework setup for clinicians to access a wide range of communication tools from 24 suppliers under one agreement to save time and money in the procurement process.

Two of the hospital sites that originally formed the Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals Trust have used System C’s patient administration system and theatre solution since 2018.

System C recently announced a further contract signing with Western Sussex Hospitals for a new strategic PAS/EPR and theatres system to adopt a single electronic patient record solution across University Hospitals Sussex.

Markus Bolton, joint chief executive of System C, said: “University Hospitals Sussex has done well to move quickly of the starting blocks using the clinical communications framework to execute their integration plans.

“I wish University Hospitals Sussex every success as a new organisation and we are looking forward to supporting the Trust to unite their digital infrastructures and further improve hospital services for patients.”