CareFlow Connect has been awarded a place on the Clinical Communication Tools framework, set up by NHS X to accelerate the adoption of digital communication tools and help meet the government’s 2021 deadline for phasing out the use of pagers.
Solutions
CareFlow Connect is a secure and mobile clinical communications and collaboration system designed to facilitate faster and safer care co-ordination for clinical teams within a hospital and across a care community. It provides encrypted mobile and web-based messaging within and between teams and directly between individuals.
Connect optimises key clinical workflows through a range of features which are configurable depending on an organisation’s needs. It fully integrates with electronic patient records, shared care and social care systems, providing a full view of the communication history and a robust audit trail. It changes the way clinicians, care workers and teams work, freeing up time to care, increasing job satisfaction and improving patient outcomes.
Key features at a glance
• Integrates with EPR, shared care and social care systems.
• Communications done in patient context and assimilated into the patient record.
• Designed to support and optimise clinical workflows.
• Complies with healthcare information and security standards.
• Uses leading edge technologies - cloud hosted, managed, scalable and resilient.
• Replaces pagers, paper lists, phone calls, texts, personal apps and emails.
Recent Covid-19 specific developments:
Kettering General is making use of +ive Covid-19 notifications generated by CareFlow Results Reporting, which can be distributed to clinical teams using CareFlow Connect with the use of alerts. This capability means that care co-ordination can be fully mobile, as well as promoting efficient mechanisms for communication during this health crisis.
Clinicians working in Vascular Surgery at North Bristol are using picture messaging in CareFlow Connect to monitor post-surgical patients. Having an easily accessible record of the wound means the patient is spared unnecessary discomfort from dressing removal. The hospital at home team are utilising the mobile nature of the app and using picture messaging which is allowing swift intervention from senior colleagues. It is hoped that a positive impact will be made upon reducing readmission rates, which is especially significant during the Covid-19 pandemic. A study of benefits will be published later in the year.
Other clinical teams from across our user community use pictures of ICU and Anaesthetic charts and message these in Connect to aid clinical assessment of patients.
As well as using CareFlow Connect to minimise the risk of infection for clinicians, Aneurin Bevan University Health Board is using information held in CareFlow Connect to inform daily telephone updates to relatives on the condition of inpatients with Covid-19. Critical care nurses who have been unable to work in critical care units during the pandemic have been able to access and use this information to inform their updates with family members, making communication simpler, quicker and safer.
Many of our CareFlow Connect customers are using clinical 'tags' in order to identify cohorts of patients affected by Covid-19 and facilitate clinical workflow. 'Tags' can be locally configured to suit specific needs and applied to a patient's record, allowing clinicians to easily filter team patient lists on a single or combination of 'tags'.
The Whittington are finding that the Handover function in CareFlow Connect is becoming more valuable for teams with high staff rotation, caused by the Covid-19 situation. Continuity of care is being supported by electronic handovers, which are increasingly being conducted remotely as work pressures increase. Having access to current vital signs and early warning scores within the app is adding valuable clinical insight during these processes.
Nursing teams at The Whittington are getting advice from Consultants using messaging within CareFlow Connect. Some advice for treating Covid-19 patients is being provided by Consultants via Connect, reducing the need to have face to face conversations and in turn, the need to don and doff PPE.
CareFlow Connect includes the ability, via a published CareFlow Alert APIs, to receive alert notifications for a variety of events and send notifications to CareFlow Connect subscribers. Suitably enabled third party solutions can make use of these APIs in order to generate an alert. For example, a pathology solution or a results reporting system could use the API in order to generate an alert for a +ive Covid-19 result and send a notification to a clinician’s mobile device.
By Kettering General Hospital
Provides encrypted mobile and web-based messaging and integrates with the patient record to allow secure patient identified messaging. Also enables secure picture, video and file sharing.
Pushes data in real time to subscribers’ mobile devices, tracks receipt and allows clinicians to instantly respond in order to coordinate care. Teams are able to build subscriptions to follow specific cohorts of patients for specific events they want to know about.
Provides a full user directory displaying photo, name, role and duty status and providing communication access through CareFlow messaging or direct phone call.
Enables teams to create and manage shared patient lists. Smart lists are configured by users to be automatically populated based on data such as Ward or Consultant. Additional features include pinnable patients, clinical tagging, handover and filters.
Enables all patient handover notes to be captured electronically. Handover notes are standardised and instantly available to all relevant team members. All entries are logged with a user and date/time stamped to create a robust audit trail. When patients move between teams, the handover notes move with them.
Enables specific information to be quickly added against a patient that then allows the patient list and handover list to be filtered against a useful tag. Teams also use them as a way of tracking the status of a patient or flagging up outstanding issues to the team.
Provides a team based approach to task management that not only addresses the needs of hospital-at-night (H@N) but can be used for all types of clinical teams 24/7.
Allows different clinical teams to request input regarding patient care and makes the transfer of care process continuously transparent to both teams. Workflow is included to handle accept and decline status of the opinion/referral and a structured SBAR format for the referral is included.
In addition to EPR, it also integrates with shared care and social care systems, breaking down the organisational and cultural boundaries and bringing staff together to meet on individual needs, whether they are in primary care, hospitals, nursing homes, community services or social care.
Monitors and analyses patients’ vital signs to identify deteriorating conditions and provide risk scores to trigger the need for further necessary care.
Supports clinicians by capturing and sharing information in real-time with colleagues, rather than relying on information traditionally held in paper notes and charts.
Displays a set of priority patient information in one location, helping clinicians to view and act accordingly using one single tool.
Supports accurate and safer prescribing through predefined prescription templates, drug decision support, alerts and pharmacy prescription validation.
A modern and flexible solution designed exclusively for the NHS. It combines advanced patient management with extended clinical functionality and workflow.
Helps a hospital better manage its patient journeys from pre-admission through to discharge by providing an accurate, real-time picture of capacity and needs.
Offers an efficient and safe mechanism for electronically ordering and receiving results.
Manages all clinical and administrative aspects of emergency care including full workflow support between ED and the wider acute hospital.
Social care
-Adults'
-Children's
-Integration