Southampton links walk-in centres

Southampton City Primary Care Trust has connected its three walk-in centres to a new community-wide network of electronic patient records, provided by Clinical Solutions.

The new system will help the three walk-in centres operate as a single virtual organisation.

Patients can be seen as soon as possible in any of the three centres as staff will have access to a detailed patient record stored on a central data server, which can be viewed and added to by any authorised user within the network.

The system has been installed at the Shirley, Bitterne and Southampton Central walk-in centres.

Clinical Solutions’ business manager, Graeme Eccles, told EHI Primary Care: "The PCT is already seeing great benefits from using this technology. The shared system is beneficial to both the patients and the PCT. It enables staff to send patients to the centre which has the best resources for their required treatments, and enables the PCT to resource staff to the areas in the city where they are needed on any particular day."

With all three centres using the same system, users can store and share patient and staff information, effectively allowing the PCT to manage one virtual care centre.

Eccles added: "The system enables the PCT to provide an effective walk-in service, and information about patients can be shared across the region, should they require further treatment elsewhere. Wherever they go, the record can follow them so less need to repeat problems and more treatment can be assured."

The system also provides clinical decision support for triage nurses and can also link with information that may be sent to them from services such as NHS Direct.

"The triage system helps nurses to reassure patients during consultations and can then be attached to the record, for full auditing at a later date," Eccles explained.

The agreement between Clinical Solutions and Southampton City PCT will initially run for 12 months.

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