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Cumbria, United Kingdom – The Cumbria health and social care sector has gone live with the first phase of their county wide resource matching and referral system. All hospital communications from Furness General Hospital in Barrow-in-Furness outbound to all social care teams based in the districts of Allerdale, Barrow, Carlisle , Copeland, Eden and the South Lakes will be automated though the system. All other secondary care locations within the University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust (UHMBT) will follow in a phased approach over the next few weeks.
Dr. Leanne Cooper, UHMBT Service Manager Acute and Emergency Medicine commented, “our ability to seamlessly transition patients across to our social services colleagues for appropriate care coordination will not only enable a completely auditable electronic history of the patient’s journey but perhaps more importantly will create a best practice standard of logistics and communications that ensures all patients’ needs are being met as quickly and effectively as possible”.
Mr. Steve Fairclough, Head of IM/IT, UHMBFT added, “the level of interoperability we have been able to rapidly build via existing API feeds across both the Lorenzo and Strata platforms have given clinicians a seamless workflow with patient care at the centre ”. Mr. Fairclough continued, “ this kind of interoperability is precisely what we must pursue across all systems that touch health and social care and delivers what the National Commissioning Board is citing as the key to unlocking real productivity within the system, through innovation and a shared best practice approach”.
Steve Johnstone, Deployment Manager, North Cumbria University Hospitals (NCUH) NHS Trust confirmed that significant progress had been made towards interoperability with their trusts acute discharge system and that all local council and social care jointly coordinated care plans would also be live across NCUH in the near future, with initial implementation scheduled to commence at West Cumberland Hospital.
Brenda Chambers, County Manager Adult Social Care, stated “This is a real step forward towards a completely paperless system that tracks people’s transition from Acute and Community Hospitals back to the community. It enables agencies to work together with shared information to produce better assessments, support and outcomes for people as they return home”.
The next phase is intended to provide all Cumbria Partnership Foundation Trust (CPFT) providers with the ability to refer clients to social services and then subsequently to be enabled to receive referrals across all stakeholders themselves. Emma Russell, General Manager for Allerdale and Project Lead for CPFT outlined, “The ability to improve the referral process to Social Services both for CPFT and all organisations within Cumbria will greatly improve the experience of patients and carers within our area and I am excited by what this project can deliver and future phases”. We hope to go live at the end of June through a phased roll out”
Dr. William Lumb, CCIO NHS Cumbria Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) stated that whilst the go live was indeed a significant milestone towards the end vision of joined up coordinated care across all Cumbria providers, there remains much work to be done and the new year will see further significant gains in what will be real innovation and tangible outcomes in patient and system advancement.
About the Cumbria Stakeholders: All of the associated organisations across Cumbria have come together in a telling example of what can be achieved with collaboration and mutual vision among stakeholders across integrated health and social care economies in England.
These visionary organizations include: NHS Cumbria CCG, Cumbria County Council, University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust (UHMBFT), Cumbria Partnership Foundation Trust, and North Cumbria University Hospitals (NCUH) NHS Trust.
About Strata Health Ltd: Strata Health leverages technology to achieve dramatic patient flow improvement within health systems. Our clients say they’ve entrusted us with the job of creating patient flow solutions that achieve real and dramatic benefits for patients, their families and the world’s devoted front line caregivers. Strata Health LTD is a UK based business and a wholly owned subsidiary of Strata Health Solutions, Inc. It is comprised of professionals with empathy for those who need care and intense respect for those who devote themselves to caring for others.
For more Information please contact: Clint Schick: 07909863342 clint@stratahealth.com www.stratahealth.co.uk