Episys works with St. Georges Hospital to deliver major cost savings
In all large hospitals, a major challenge is ensuring that all medication is dispensed quickly and accurately to all wards and departments across the site. To achieve this St. George’s have introduced ward based pharmacy technicians who can use a revolutionary wireless printing solution to achieve improved patient benefits and significant cost savings.
The results of a pilot scheme involving four ward-based pharmacy technicians proved that the quality of pharmacy service provided to patients was greatly improved and medicine wastage was drastically reduced. Stock is more efficiently managed, and through the re-use of previously dispensed medicines, a saving of 14.65% in the ward medicines budget has been achieved.
The new wireless label printing system has been developed on site at St. George’s Healthcare NHS Trust in partnership with Episys. Following the initial pilot and after the detailed analysis of the initial results, it has now been approved to be deployed throughout the Trust.
It enables ward-based pharmacy staff to provide a prompt and well run service, being on hand to take a patient’s medication history and then dispense take-home medication on the wards. This contributes to reducing a patient’s length of stay, reduces the time taken to dispense the medication as it can be done on the spot rather than taking trips to the pharmacy department, and greatly reduces wastage as medicines can be relabeled with the correct ‘To-Take-Out’ (TTO) medicine information.
St. George’s have been the first Trust in the country to introduce such a system, for which they have received a national innovation award. Steve Beale, Pharmacy IT Manager at St. George’s comments, “It would be too expensive to have labels and permanent printers on every ward, but then I saw a demonstration of mobile printing at an Episys event and realized that this could be a cost effective solution to the problem.”
Episys supplied Toshiba SP2D printers that can be used over an 802.11 wireless network. These printers are portable and are carried around by the pharmacist. When a label is required the pharmacist can access the JAC system from the ward’s PC and produce the label without the need to walk back to the pharmacy. This delivers a large time saving, releases hospital beds earlier, and achieves major savings on the ward’s medicine bills.
“Episys provided support every step of the way,” adds Steve. “This project allowed us to bring the printing to the point of need and deliver not only increased service levels and significant cost savings, but also enhanced job satisfaction for staff.”
About St. George’s Healthcare NHS Trust
St. George's Hospital in South London is one of the biggest NHS hospitals in the country.
St. George's Hospital in South London is one of the biggest NHS hospitals in the country.
The activity of St. George's is reflected in the number of patients they look after. Each year they provide around 50,000 NHS inpatient operations where patients need to stay overnight or longer, plus a further 24,000 day case operations where patients don't need to stay.
St. George’s provide all the usual care you'd expect from an NHS hospital - such as accident and emergency, maternity services and care for older people and children. But they are also a leading national center for more specialist care including neurology, cardiac care and cancer. They have some of the best staff in the country in these areas and they contribute to the care of the local population as well as referrals from elsewhere in the UK. St. George’s continues to evolve to provide top-quality healthcare for the future.