Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust drives interoperability with Rio electronic patient record

Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust has gone live with Servelec’s electronic patient record (EPR) software, Rio.

The trust is also in the process of implementing Servelec’s cloud-based interoperability platform, Conexes, which enables a safe, secure environment to share data between systems and apps to deliver a more-integrated approach to patient care.

The Rio EPR went live across Kent Community’s children’s services this summer as part of a five-part phased rollout, providing the trust with an improved user experience and document management system.

A live data stream within the EPR means that up-to-date patient records are all available in one place, which creates a better flow for staff to instantly find and retrieve information on each patient.

The EPR offers a view of the patient in one snapshot, which will benefit them during appointments as they no longer need to repeat information to their clinician. This will, in turn, improve clinical quality as all information will be present and correct.

As the clinician does not have to spend as much time before each appointment searching for patient background, they are free to spend more one-on-one time with the patient.

The system also provides the trust with a better reporting functionality, including the ability to produce KPI reports.

The next and penultimate phase of the rollout is planned to take place in October, and will see the completion of the migration of patient community hospital records from the legacy system into Rio, enabling the trust to stop dual running across systems.

This will allow the trust to share information with third-party organisations, such as local authorities and other care organisations, promoting a joined-up approach to care.

Some 2,615 staff at the trust, across a wide range of roles, are already live with Rio, and a further 1,800 are still to be enabled.

Kent is truly a progressive trust, seeing the value in joined-up care in the region and helping health and social care become better connected to improve the patient experience

And now that the core EPR solution has been implemented, Servelec is working to integrate further modules to the system that will improve workflows across the trust, including Rio Mobilise for mobile working, a solution which is created in partnership with Totalmobile.

Donna Conway, head of IT projects at the trust, said: “Servelec has provided us with an entirely end-to-end solution with the Rio EPR.

“We’re already seeing improved interoperability between internal systems due to the flow of data the system provides.

“We were at the natural end of our contract and wanted a more-modern platform.

“The issue was that we were finding reporting harder to do, and Rio makes this much easier.”

Steve Wightman, healthcare managing director at Servelec, adds: “Kent is truly a progressive trust, seeing the value in joined-up care in the region and helping health and social care become better connected to improve the patient experience.

“I look forward to seeing the final stage of the implementation bring further functionality to the EPR, including mobile working, which will mean staff no longer have to duplicate data entry and can update records on the go. “