Spinal centre goes live with IMS Maxims

The National Spinal Injuries Centre, part of Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust, has gone live with an electronic patient record from IMS Maxims.

The specialist 127 bed unit in Stoke Mandeville Hospital prepared to implement the Maxims Spinal System throughout 2010 and went live in December.

Rehabilitation programme lead Claire Guy said there had been no issues with the system during its initial six months of operation.

“It [the go-live] went simply and the product worked just as it needed to. Apart from staff not being too sure of how it worked, it’s been very reliable.”

The unit had been using Cerner Millennium, with the addition of paper records. It has retained Millennium, but added the IMS Maxims system to provide it with clinical functionality.

Patients who were admitted prior to the go-live still have paper records, as Guy said transferring the notes into the EPR would be a significant manual task. However, summaries of patient care have been added into the electronic record.

Guy said the introduction of a fully electronic system was a shock to some of the 270 members of staff, as they went for the 'big-bang' implementation approach – rather than phasing in the new system.

All six of the centre's inpatient wards and an outpatient ward went live within one week of each other.

“It’s been a big big change for some staff who have been using [paper records] for years... but they’ve really embraced it; they couldn’t imagine not using an electronic system now.”

The Buckinghamshire unit followed the lead taken by The James Cook University Hospital in Middlesbourgh, which went live with Maxims Spinal in 2004.

Guy said the Middlesbourgh example showed potential for electronic systems in spinal units, but because the centre is much larger, it needed additional functionality.

This has included loading meeting notes into the system, so staff unable to attend particular meetings can keep up to date with developments in a patient's care.

The unit is hoping to integrate its picture archiving and communications system into the EPR. The change to the electronic system also also meant investing in mobile computers.

Staff are now able to add information into the system at the point of care by using laptops. Each ward has been given two to three laptops in addition to desktop computers.

Chief executive of IMS Maxims, Shane Tickell, said the new system is helping to improve staff efficiency.

“Our new solution is helping staff to carry out their roles effectively as they now have all relevant information about a patient in a single view.”

He said the electronic system eliminated the possibility of lost or mislaid files, with unreadable handwriting, or with information being missed from records.