6,000 nurses from one of the UK’s biggest teaching hospitals are to have access to Elsevier’s EHR-based Care Planning solution, enabling greater efficiencies and simplifying daily processes.    

Elsevier has announced a new three-year partnership with Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, one of the largest teaching hospitals in the UK and a tertiary centre for specialist treatment, to provide a new and effective digital solution for nursing care plans. This is the only EHR-based Care Planning solution that combines the patient history with evidence-based clinical practice guidelines and standardised assessments into one patient-centered plan. The rollout of the innovative care planning solution is set to be introduced across Leeds Teaching Hospitals later this year. 

The solution allows Leeds Teaching Hospitals to deploy digital nursing care plans at scale, a task which would have taken clinical and software developers many years to complete. It will also enable greater visibility of nursing activity and help facilitate better reporting of acuity information, quality metrics, and other ward assurance data. This will allow more efficient decision-making, simplify day-to-day work and save time. In addition to this, documentation can be completed at the bedside with the patient, supporting the Trust’s Green Plan and aim for reducing carbon footprint. 

Lisa Grant, Chief Nurse at Leeds Teaching Hospitals, remarked: “This is an exciting and strategically important project for the Trust, which will transform the way we complete nursing documentation, saving time, supporting great communication, and linking information together to improve the day-to-day experience of our patients and colleagues.  

“The outputs of these care plans will, for the first time, allow us to quantify the breadth and depth of nursing activity across the organisation. This intelligence will enable senior nurses to ensure that support is directed to where it is most needed. The solution will also provide a wealth of data for nursing research to further improve the nursing practice evidence base and outcomes of our patients.” 

The Care Planning solution will be surfaced within Leeds Teaching Hospitals’ current electronic health record PPM+ (Patient Pathway Manager), which is developed and managed in-house. 

Georgie Duncan, Deputy CCIO at Leeds Teaching Hospitals, commented: “Embedding the new digital care plans into PPM+ means that information is easily accessible for clinical colleagues across the Trust and wider region where appropriate. We’re supporting new and improved ways of working using a system our colleagues already know and use every day.” This integration will also eliminate hundreds of hours of configuration work and minimise the IT burden.  

Tim Morris, VP, Go-to-market EMEALAAP, Elsevier, added: “We are incredibly proud of establishing this partnership with Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust. In the current climate, nurses are facing an intensifying pressure to deliver the highest possible quality of care to an increasing number of patients. The introduction of our Care Planning solution can ease the strain on their workforce across the entirety of the Trust, which is of paramount importance.”