Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (CUH) has become the first healthcare trust in the UK to revalidate against the highest international quality standard that recognises the use of technology, data and analytics, and patient engagement and involvement to support the delivery of high-quality patient care.
In 2020, CUH, which runs Addenbrooke’s and The Rosie hospitals, became the first trust in the UK to achieve HIMSS EMRAM (Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model) Stage 7. Now, under more stringent criteria - assessing digital adoption and care quality across multiple clinical settings - CUH has revalidated against the new Stage 7 standard, the highest rating of the HIMSS international digital maturity and adoption model for healthcare.
HIMSS (Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society) is an international organisation dedicated to supporting hospitals to benchmark and improve their use of digital technology, through various digitalised healthcare adoption models, to enable improvements to patient safety, care quality, cost-effectiveness, patient engagement and access to services. Every few years, Stage 7 trusts are reassessed to ensure they are maintaining these high standards.
The rigorous assessment took place at CUH yesterday (Wednesday 25 September 2024).
As part of the assessment, HIMSS inspectors observed clinical staff from various hospital areas including inpatient wards, emergency department, outpatient clinics, and pharmacy using the Trust’s Epic electronic patient record, and electronic data and analytics, to demonstrate how digital use is embedded within their clinical and operational practice for everyday patient care.
Inspectors also heard from patients about how technology - notably the Trust’s MyChart patient portal - is involving, engaging and supporting them in their care and treatment. MyChart provides patients with secure access to parts of their hospital health record (such as appointment details, test results, follow-up letters) and the ability to communicate directly with their clinical teams.
Dr Wai Keong Wong, director of digital at CUH, said: “This year marks 10 years since we became the first UK trust to implement our Trust-wide Epic electronic patient record (EPR), integrated technologies and supporting IT infrastructure to transform and better support how we provide care to our patients.
He added: "Since 2014, we have successfully moved away from predominantly manual workflows and paper-based clinical documentation to fully digital ways of working, using our EPR with integrated handheld and mobile devices to record clinical information in real-time."
In all our inpatient wards, critical care areas and across our emergency department, clinicians use mobile devices to ‘scan for safety’. Digital barcodes on patient wristbands – which automatically open a patient’s electronic record – are scanned, together with barcodes on medications, blood bags, and communally stored breast milk at the point of medication administration, specimen collection, blood transfusions and baby feeding. This provides an added safety net in ensuring the right administrations and collections are given to and taken from the right patients each time.
Dr Wai Keong Wong
Dr Sue Broster, executive director of innovation, digital and improvement at CUH, said: “Over 240,000 of our patients are actively using our MyChart patient portal to become more involved and engaged in their care, and be able to communicate digitally with their clinical teams. Patients are sent appointment details electronically to their MyChart and can complete pre-appointment tasks and health questionnaires electronically prior to their appointments to reduce administrative time in clinic. They can also digitally check-in for their appointments through MyChart when they arrive in clinic, letting administrative and clinical staff know that they have arrived, preventing the sharing of private demographic information at busy reception desks, and supporting clinic efficiencies."
Revalidating against Stage 7 is a truly magnificent achievement, which we as a Trust are incredibly proud of. We have come a long way over the past 10 years since becoming a digital hospital, and even more so over the last four years since first achieving HIMSS Stage 7.
Dr Sue Broster
Dr Sue Broster added: “We continuously strive to improve and are committed to developing further digital capabilities and technological advances to put our patients in control, and enhance care and treatment even more using clinically embedded and adopted technologies.”
CUH's positive and inclusive culture has led to an enterprise-wide adoption of digitalisation supporting staff with the work that they do and empowering patients in the management of their care. It is therefore no surprise that CUH has revalidated for EMRAM Stage 7, as they continue to strive for improvement with everything they do.
Ellen Klaus, Senior Digital Health Advisor at HIMSS