Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has successfully gone live with Altera’s Sunrise Knowledge-based Medication Administration (KBMA) system, across all adult inpatient wards. The trust says this move enhances patient safety with closed-loop medicine administration and will accelerate digital maturity towards the HIMSS Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model (EMRAM) stage 6 target.
Over a three-week period in September 2024, the system was rolled out in phases starting with three early adopter wards at the trust’s Cheltenham General Hospital site. The trust specifically selected three wards that had stable populations and patients with medium to high medication needs. This approach enabled the system to be put through its paces and adjustments to be made before rolling out to all remaining adult inpatient wards at the site a week later.
The final stage of the implementation saw all adult inpatient wards successfully go live at the trust’s other major regional hospital site, Gloucestershire Royal, the following week.Known to staff as the Scan4Safety initiative, the new system is enabling users to positively identify patients and validate medicines at the point of drug administration using barcode technology within Sunrise KBMA. The new functionality is driving a fully closed-loop medication administration process, which is safer, smarter and more streamlined.
Matt Little, CNIO at Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust said: “I've been out on the wards following each go-live and patients clearly recognise the importance of ensuring patient identification while administering medications. They also appreciate the steps we are taking to verify medications. On some wards, we have patients who receive multiple different medications and the process of assembling those together with ensuring you've got the right strength and dose all comes under the ethos of the Scan4Safety initiative.”
From a staffing perspective, it is supporting teams to reduce adverse drug events and administration errors by acting as a trusted “digital colleague.” It is providing extra confidence when administering medications and validating the five rights of medication administration: Right Patient, Right Medication, Right Time, Right Route and Right Dose.
The recent go-live is part of a digital transformation strategy to increase digital maturity and reach HIMSS EMRAM Stage 6 accreditation. Closed-loop medicine management is a key requirement for HIMSS EMRAM certification, a globally recognised standard of digital maturity linked to safety and efficiency.
Sunrise KBMA is a key element of the strategy that also included implementing the Sunrise EPR in 2019. The closed-loop medicines management solution, incorporating electronic prescribing, the interface to the Pharmacy departmental solution, clinical decision support and now closed loop medicines administration has been deployed within the single Sunrise EPR platform to provide faster access to patient records while delivering care.
James Hodgin, ePMA Programme Lead added: “The successful go-live is the culmination of months of work from the dedicated team we have at the trust. We’ve had fantastic support from senior leadership, clinical and digital colleagues on this programme. The enthusiasm and support across successive go-lives in ePMA phase 2 has enabled us to deliver real change, culminating in CLMA. Everyone involved has done an amazing job, helping to increase our digital maturity and embed a safe care delivery model across the trust, for which I am very grateful.
“Since going live, CLMA has continued to bed in well, in the first week of September alone 14,315 patient scans were recorded and 66,335 medications were scanned. As a trust we’re keen to deliver the benefits which Closed Loop promised, and in early evaluations with our nursing staff 93% saw the benefit of the system and 64% said the system makes them feel safer when administering medications. It’s a really promising start at this early stage.”
Rachael Fox, Executive Vice President, EMEA at Altera Digital Health said: “It’s been wonderful supporting Gloucestershire Hospitals on their accelerated path to digital excellence and the team there has done amazingly well. The trust was aware of the capabilities of the system after seeing it go-live at Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and the contribution it made to the trust reaching the first HIMSS EMRAM State 7 status in Europe on the new standard. It gave the trust the confidence to select Sunrise KBMA, so I’m pleased we’ve been able to work together to emulate the solution and its benefits at Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.”
