Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust partnered with Aire Logic to collaborate on a new integrated EHR solution, PPM+, aiming to prove the NHS could build and deploy its own EHR cost-effectively, and on a large scale. LTHT is one of the largest trusts in the country with 7 hospitals, over 18,000 staff and an annual budget of £1 billion. With 350+ systems across the Trust, LTHT did not want to rip and replace well-established systems, but integrate best of breed solutions to provide an overall shared patient care record that would empower professionals to manage care more efficiently, capture consistent data, and make information readily available to support better clinical decisions and improve patient outcomes. PPM+ was designed not only to integrate with the diverse systems across the trust, but with the wider healthcare landscape. The solution was especially built using forms4health technology, enabling rapid, massive scale roll-out and unlimited expansion with relatively small effort and cost to the trust. The resulting model is innovative, efficient and completely transferable.
PPM+ was designed to digitally gather, store, share and analyse data from across the whole Trust. The solution allows clinicians and subject matter experts to design their own eForms, share them with colleagues for approval, and implement them at their own pace. This accelerates collaboration and agreement on new features, without reliance on external software provider release cycles. eForms can be replicas of existing paper forms, or entirely new ones, customised to capture whatever information is required. Once published into live, the eForms mean any recorded data is available immediately, legibly, and without duplication, on any device, supporting mobile working and continuity of care.
PPM+ has become mission critical to the operation of LTHT and the wider region. It now supports almost a million paperless record submissions every month (with this figure rapidly increasing) and has more than 18,000 users. In one month, the system supported around 70 million interventions across Leeds, with this number continuing to rise, and at peak times, an eForm was completed every 2.6 seconds. The Trust uses the eForms solution to capture information digitally on National Early Warning Score (NEWS2), Discharge notifications, VTE Assessments, General Nursing Assessments and Handovers, to name just a few.
Beyond its primary purpose supporting LTHT’s complex day-to-day needs, the PPM+ EHR is the heart of the Leeds Care Record (LCR). A collaboration involving over 140 organisations, The LCR is used in all 105 GP practices across Leeds, the local mental health trust, Leeds Community Health, Leeds City Council, and Leeds’ two major hospices, ensuring care records are available wherever an individual engages with local health and care services. PPM+ also contributes to the Acute Oncology Care Record and the Yorkshire & Humber Genomics Medical Centre, using eForms to gather data for the 100,000 Genomes project.
Here are just some of the ways Aire Logic’s eForms technology is improving the delivery of care at LTHT:
At a time when NHS resources are so stretched, it is important for organisations to find cost effective solutions that in turn, will help them to achieve financial savings. The combination of an easier transition (digitising existing workflows), and a rapid implementation, mean organisations can quickly start to realise the signicant financial benefits of eForms. LTHT have already seen the following returns:
“The latest statistics on our EHR, supported by Aire Logic, clearly indicate the solution is not a nice to have, but a clinical tool that delivers patient care every moment of every day.”
Richard Corbridge
Chief Digital and Information Officer,
Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust