Creating safer care in the community: In conversation with Trish Nolan, Midlands Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust

We recently spoke to Trish Nolan, Head of Digital Skills and Business Change at Midlands Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust, about how the integration between eCommunity and their Electronic Patient Record system is reducing administrative burden and creating efficiencies across the community care they are provide at the Trust.

1. How did you work with RLDatix to collaboratively develop eCommunity?

We originally worked with RLDatix to develop the eCommunity system on an agile basis. We would meet with the developers every week, to discuss what we wanted and needed out of the system, making sure to involve our clinicians. Since the initial collaborative development of the system, we have continued to work that way, with representatives from RLDatix coming to visit us, to make sure the system is evolving in a way that is most valuable.

2. Before integrating eCommunity with your Electronic Patient Record System (Rio), what challenges were you experiencing?

Before the integration, we would enter patient details and the referral info into Rio and then we would also have to enter that same information into eCommunity. There was a lot of duplicate work. Now that we have the integration, that duplication has gone. This also means there’s less room for error as well, as the duplication created a potential risk of details being input incorrectly. Now that the double entry has been eliminated, we know that the information in the Rio EPR system is also going to be correct in eCommunity.

3. Do you have any advice for anyone thinking of integrating their systems?

My advice for anybody who is thinking about integrating would be to test, test and test again. Try to think of every single scenario that you might come across because there’s always something that you might forget.

4. How has integrating the two systems supported with creating efficiencies at the Trust?

From an efficiency point of view, we originally rolled out the eCommunity system to 39 teams. With an average of 227 referrals per day, we have found the integration is saving us 10 minutes per referral, as staff no longer need to duplicate information across the two systems.

We’ve saved a lot of time and we have also had other teams requesting access to the system, as they can see the efficiencies we have created. We now have 45 teams using the system.

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