Medway Community Healthcare uses Datix to drive improvements in patient safety
Automation increases staff engagement, improves incident reporting, and creates a joined-up approach to patient safety
Medway Community Healthcare (MCH) has deployed Datix software to introduce a cohesive and consistent approach to patient safety and drive tangible improvements in services and care.
The £57m business has invested in Datix Incidents, Claims, Complaints, Customer Experience, Dashboards and Risk Register modules.
Since implementing Datix technology, MCH has increased staff engagement, dramatically improved incident reporting, and accelerated response and investigation timescales. Furthermore, patient and visitor feedback has improved year-on-year.
Between April 2014 and March 2015, compliments outnumbered complaints by 13:1 and, of the 4,686 respondents to the annual customer feedback survey, 95% said they would recommend using the services of MCH to others.
Lesley Graham, information governance facilitator at Medway Community Healthcare, said: “With the transformation of the organisation to a social enterprise, the time had come to find an automated solution to create a joined-up approach to patient safety in an increasingly-complex NHS landscape. Today, all staff have immediate access to incidents across the organisation and directors have clear visibility of serious incidents as they arise, putting them in complete control of their patient safety environment.”
When MCH first deployed the Datix solution, it was a shared service used by other healthcare commissioners. Today, the social enterprise has complete control of the paperless system that links records, runs reports, and immediately notifies staff of priority actions from a single integrated platform. This means that staff follow consistent processes using a common language, which allows them to customise the sharing of selected information and keeps data secure at all times.
The automatic feedback facility provided by the Datix system means staff can elect to see exactly what happens to the incidents they record. This gives a far-greater sense of involvement and empowerment because people know their efforts are making a real difference to patient safety. In turn, this has had an impact on incident reporting in a positive way.
One of the biggest benefits of using Datix is that organisational leaders have instant access to accurate, pertinent information and are immediately notified of serious incidents using the dashboards facility.
Immediate access to accurate information held in the Datix system has realised a series of clinical benefits. In addition to better documentation, information security, and the ability to pinpoint training requirements at certain care home providers; community nurses have made significant improvements in processes relating to the assessment of pressure ulcer results, fall risks, and have reduced the number of transfer of care incidents.
Jonathan Hazan, director of Datix, said: “The NHS landscape is full of change and complexity and organisations like Medway Community Healthcare, which has undergone significant transformation over the last few years rely on our technology to create a stable-yet-flexible, process-driven patient safety infrastructure.
"The transparency of data held in the Datix system removes ambiguity, helps leaders make better decisions, and drives activity. In short, the system gives healthcare organisations a perfect line of sight between ward and organisational performance, putting them in complete control and supporting their quest to make tangible improvements to patient services and care.”
