Doncaster and Bassetlaw trials GP communication tool

Doncaster and Bassetlaw Teaching Hospitals is piloting new software to help speed up communication over patient discharge plans and ensure efficient and improved communication with GPs.

Accurx’s Message GP practice allows NHS professionals to contact a patient’s GP in order to access information quickly and share information across care settings.

Doncaster and Bassetlaw’s Skin Integrity Team is currently using the product to send wound care plans to the GPs of patients once they’re discharged. As a result, the team has been able to streamline its communication and ensure timely, safe and efficient post-discharge care.

Message GP practice allows healthcare staff to email a patient’s GP, they can also send attachments and all documents and correspondence can be saved to the patient’s GP record with one click.

The system gives staff at Doncaster and Bassetlaw the confidence that wound care plans have been received by the right person, as well as speeding up the whole process of sharing this vital information and ensuring appropriate care is in place.

Kelly Moore, lead nurse for the Skin Integrity Team at Doncaster and Bassetlaw Teaching Hospitals, said: “Accurx’s simple technology has improved the communication that we have about our patients with their GP practices. Using Message GP practice has meant that we are now much more confident that the patient’s aftercare instructions are getting to the right place at the right time.

“In one instance, a GP practice that received the information via Accurx upon the patient’s discharge from DBTH was able to triage the patient immediately to a specialist team. Without the practice having received this information, the patient would have waited at least a week for an appointment with the practice nurse and then another week to get referred to the specialist team.”

As well as delivering significant time savings for the team at Doncaster and Bassetlaw, the system is also helping GPs run their appointments more efficiently and provided them with more information ahead of appointments. In addition, referrals can be traced to ensure patients are receiving the follow-up care they require.

Dr Satya Raghuvanshi, head of clinical at Accurx said: “Delivering truly integrated care requires healthcare professionals to work as one team around a patient. Across the healthcare system, this is made difficult by outdated routes of communication – be that sending a letter or waiting on hold to speak to the reception team at a GP practice.”

Dr Raghuvanshi continued: “We built Message GP practice, a function of our two-way messaging product AccuMail, to help NHS staff across different services do just that. We’re excited to continue working with DBTH and seeing the benefits it brings to patients and their healthcare teams in Doncaster and Bassetlaw.”

In May this year Accurx rolled out a nationally-available patient record sharing system, after successfully piloting Record View with four ICSs.