Medway Community Healthcare, a community interest company, is the first to implement the newly launched community healthcare system, Advanced Community, from Advanced Health & Care (Advanced).
This is the first IT system designed specifically for community healthcare that has mobile working at its core.
Medway Community Healthcare will roll-out Advanced Community in a phased approach to a wide range of services, from health visitors and community nurses to speech and language therapists and dietitians, providing over 700 members of staff with access to the new system.
Advanced Community is expected to be deployed in phases with the first services being operational this year.
Medway Community Healthcare, which recently became one of the new health social enterprises, serves around 280,000 people across Medway, providing a wide range of planned and unscheduled care in local settings including healthy living centres, inpatient units and people's homes.
Advanced Community will be used to deliver integrated care in the community, providing referral management, care planning, assessments, patient records, bed management and appointment booking.
The system also includes purpose built mobile applications and mobile workforce management solutions, enabling the secure recording and reporting of patient information from anywhere and at anytime, even when a mobile signal is unavailable.
Clinicians will be able to deliver care assessments and care plans, effectively manage treatment and booking in and out of appointments -all via Advanced's iNurse mobile application.
Rob Howard, Head of Informatics and Performance, Medway Community Healthcare says, "Advanced Community will transform the way we work, enabling us to more efficiently and cost-effectively deliver care. Its integration with mobile technology will allow staff to retrieve and record key patient information whilst on the move. Importantly, our teams will be able to more effectively manage their time and appointment planning across the area we serve."
Rob continues, "We already use other Advanced products and so working in partnership with Advanced Health & Care gives us confidence the system will have the flexibility and ease of use to enable staff to spend more time with patients, so improving the patients' experience."
Jim Chase, Managing Director of Advanced Health & Care says, "Advanced Community is the only system designed specifically for the community healthcare market that has been built around mobile working. I have no doubt that Advanced Community will deliver considerable cost and efficiency benefits and put Medway ahead of the curve."
Advanced Community works alongside Advanced's Adastra 111, minor injuries, Single Point of Access, GP out-of-hours and other unscheduled care services. It also enables access to the Advanced End-of-Life Care Register and the Summary Care Record while supporting a wide range of integrations and messaging to primary and secondary healthcare IT systems.
About Medway Community Healthcare
Medway Community Healthcare is a £50 million business with 1,100 staff providing a wide range of both planned and unscheduled care in local settings such as healthy living centres, inpatient units and people's homes.
In 2011 Medway Community Healthcare became a social enterprise Community Interest Company (CIC), providing community NHS services to the people of Medway.
They have a strong history of partnership working with local GPs, Medway NHS Foundation Trust, Medway Council and other local stakeholders. Medway Community Healthcare provides a range of community based healthcare services across Medway and our vision is to continue to deliver high quality clinical services supported by professional business support services whilst maintaining financial sustainability and delivering excellent clinical outcomes for patients.
About Advanced Health & Care
Advanced Health & Care is a leading supplier of IT management systems for urgent & unplanned care, homecare, residential care, hospices, mobile information for community carers and back-office management systems for NHS trusts, local authorities and care providers.
Working with partners in the NHS, local government and the private sector, Advanced Health & Care is delivering IT solutions in support of safe, efficient care delivery with integrated management information. Advanced's unique proposition is its range of integrated care solutions offering visibility of information for both the commissioner and care provider.
The Advanced Health & Care suite of products includes: Adastra, CareSys, Crosscare, Smart Business Suite, iConnect, iNurse, Advanced End-of-Life Care Register, Saturn & StaffPlan. Over 1000 care provider organisations use IT solutions from Advanced Health & Care.
Additionally, across the Advanced Computer Software Group, over 1,000 customers use Advanced's software applications in cloud environments meaning that Advanced Health & Care is ideally placed to deliver cloud-based Adastra.