PRSB publishes site visit report
This year the PRSB undertook a series of visits to organisations using the e-discharge summary standard, to better understand the successes and challenges they are having.
Through our visits to different trusts across the country, we spoke to health and care professionals about where and how they are using the standard and the benefits they are seeing. We visited 15 organisations in total, including acute hospitals, mental health trusts and sustainability and transformation partnerships (STPs). All these organisations are at different stages of implementation and have different levels of infrastructure in place. Following the visits we have published a report, which explores our findings.
As a result of these findings, the PRSB has begun to develop materials to support Chief Clinical Information Officers (CCIOs) and medical directors to drive change locally, as well as creating resources to educate professionals on the importance of a high-quality discharge summary.
Developing online materials to support organisations
The PRSB worked closely with NHS CCIO Dr Simon Eccles, chair of the RCGP Professor Helen Stokes-Lampard and Dr Tim Yates, chief medical information officer and neurology registrar at the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust to create training videos showing hospital doctors and other clinicians how e-discharge summaries should be completed.
NHS England is sharing the videos widely, and we are encouraging trusts and colleges to integrate them into their education materials to raise awareness about what is required from a clinical perspective, to meet the upcoming deadline for sharing discharges digitally between hospitals and primary care.
We are also working with NHS Digital which will be conducting first of type testing to ensure messages can be sent in structured coded form with a range of trusts, EPR systems and GP systems. This will help us to help us to make sure the standard is compatible for most major systems suppliers.