Cornwall trust goes live with McKesson Cardiology Haemodynamic Monitoring & Echo Reporting
Results include halving of reporting time and joined-up cardiology services across Cornwall
Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust has gone live with McKesson Cardiology, a solution that provides an image archiving system to facilitate the sharing and review of cath and echo images, ECGs, and Echo procedure reporting to enhance workflow efficiency.
Located in Truro, Royal Cornwall Hospital is the biggest hospital in the county, providing emergency and specialist healthcare.
The trust’s cardiology department is one of the largest in the hospital, offering a comprehensive range of diagnostic and invasive services from ECG through to heart failure services, primary PCI, cardiac catheterisation, and complex device implantation.
It became very apparent when we were undertaking our training that McKesson’s Echo Solution is built from an end user’s perspective, by somebody who knows what it is like to sit in a room for 7-12 hours a day and perform 10 echocardiograms
The cardiology team comprises nine consultant cardiologists, three cardiac wards, seven cardiographers, 14 physiologists, and a large nursing and support team.
The McKesson cardiovascular information system CVIS replaced the trust’s previous imaging system.
Since go-live in late November, the trust has used the new CVIS to transform the workflows involved in sharing and reporting of cath and echo images across Cornwall, reducing reporting time by 50%.
Duncan Sleeman, senior chief cardiac physiologist, at the Royal Cornwall Hospital, said: “We are located on a peninsula: with our cardiac physiologist team, the nursing staff and the consultant staff all in separate locations.
“With the previous system there were many constraints that caused difficulties particularly in highly time-sensitive scenarios.
“Communication was slow and sending reports from one location to another, particularly to the major tertiary surgical centre that is 90 miles away, was an arduous manual process.”
“Now, with McKesson Cardiology we have a web-based system that enables the extended teams to see all of the patient information including images and reports securely, in real-time, while in clinics and on the wards.
“It is a time-efficient and convenient solution that has completely revolutionised the way in which cardiology services, both within the trust and throughout the wider community, are being delivered.”
The implementation team at McKesson and Royal Cornwall Hospital reviewed the out-of-the-box version of the McKesson Echo system and worked together to tailor the software to Cornwall’s specific needs, which included adding user-specific terminology to the reports.
Each of the consultants spent time with the McKesson team adding the phrases and terminology we use regularly to customise the system for each user’s preference
“It became very apparent when we were undertaking our training that McKesson’s Echo Solution is built from an end user’s perspective, by somebody who knows what it is like to sit in a room for 7-12 hours a day and perform 10 echocardiograms,” Sleeman added.
“Each of the consultants spent time with the McKesson team adding the phrases and terminology we use regularly to customise the system for each user’s preference.”
“It was completely and utterly user friendly, from design and installation to training.”
