Manx Care is reflecting on improvements over the past six months, following its launch of technology that allows for automatic escalation of deteriorating patients across all adult inpatient areas.
In May 2023, Manx Care became the first trust in the UK and crown dependencies to integrate their e-observations software, which has been used across adult inpatient areas since 2015, with hard alerting (also known as auto-escalation), to support clinical teams in responding quickly to deteriorating patients.
Patientrack records vital signs at the bedside with automatic calculation of the RCP National Early Warning Score (NEWS), and SmartPage aids communication between ward clinicians and responding teams. Both systems are supplied by software provider Alcidion.
This software has been put in place to help Manx Care’s compliance with the NEWS2 escalation pathway, which ensures the right clinicians are contacted at the right time when a patient starts showing physiological signs of deterioration. Patientrack detects the deterioration, and SmartPage ensures a timely trigger - providing an extra layer of patient safety, and supporting responding teams by providing a safeguard against human error.
The positive impact of this development was reflected in the Manx Care Digital Informatics team’s appearance as a finalist in HSJ Digital’s ‘Digital Clinical Safety’ Award 2023 in June – a fantastic achievement on a national level.
In addition, functionality has been built in to prevent 'bleep fatigue' – ensuring that responding teams are not paged unnecessarily, as this could impact response time.
Not every high-scorer will be for full escalation, and not every low-scorer will be stable, which is why clinical oversight is crucial, and the software has been configured to support Manx Care’s specific workflows and processes.
Dr Gregor Peden, Chief Clinical Information Officer said:
‘Oversight of deteriorating patients in real time for our response teams is an important step towards improving patient safety. Thank you also to our partners at Alcidion for capturing our requirements and helping us to deliver them effectively.’
Rebecca Erani, Chief Nursing Information Officer (CNIO), said:
‘We have had some really positive feedback from staff across the site who have enabled this change which is great to see, we will be sending out a questionnaire survey soon which will help us capture benefits realised and shape any future developments.’
Katy Cain, CNIO at Alcidion said:
‘Manx Care is leading the way with implementing auto-escalation of deteriorating patients. At a time when pressures on the NHS are at an all-time high, Manx Care has prioritised patient safety of in-patients and we’re delighted to support them with software that supports their clinical processes.’
