News

Wednesday 30 September 2009

NHS Newham deploys new Datix incident management and patient safety system in double quick time Datix Ltd, the UK market leader in software for patient safety and risk management announced today that NHS Newham fully implemented Datix in only three months with the incident reporting and management system deployed across the PCT in just six weeks.

Jonathan Hazan, Chief Executive Officer at Datix said, "This is one of the fastest ever Datix implementations within the NHS. Datix was awarded the contract just before Christmas 2008 and by mid-February 2009 the system was up and running with staff across the Trust completing the new online incident report form

NHS Newham serves the community of the London Borough of Newham in north east London. It employs approximately 1,050 staff and is based across 23 sites, commissioning 65 GP practices, 69 retail pharmacies, 55 opticians and 80 dentists in the borough. As well as providing a range of services, the Trust commissions most of the primary community and secondary health care in the borough via a network of independent contractor

Kim Fox, Corporate Governance Manager at NHS Newham explained the secret to the successful implementation: "We had experience of implementing a previous system and therefore knew the questions to ask and what to avoid. With our previous contract due to expire at the end of February, we were very focused and had all the pieces in place to implement Datix quickly and effectivel

From the outset, the governance department put together a small internal team of three people plus Kim Fox to work with a dedicated professional project manager to identify requirements. The team also devised procedures which governed how everyone would work together, including the IT departmen

Kim Fox said, "We had all the necessary resources in place, with a good in-house capability and an excellent external project manager. We also set up a user group from the beginning to test early versions of the deployment. Underpinning our success was the fact that we had the full support of senior managemen

"We also specified that we required our incident report forms to give people the ability to select either a clinical or non-clinical incident at the start of every form. Our previous system had not allowed this option and as a result, information was often incomplete as we were unable to make certain fields mandatory depending on whether the incident was clinical or non-clinical. Datix gave us the flexibility to implement this vital feature and so far user feedback has been very positive. It is now easier to input incidents and we expect to see real benefits from this in the coming month

NHS Newham has now deployed the entire Datix system which comprises Safety Alerts, Risk Register, Patient Advice and Liaison Service (PALS), Complaints, Claims and Freedom of Information management in addition to the Incident Management module. Future plans include extending the use of Datix to the PCT?s independent contractors including GP practices and dentist

Jonathan Hazan concluded, "The majority of the other NHS organisations within the North East London NHS Sector are using Datix so we are pleased to welcome Newham PCT to the community. This project certainly illustrated how working as a team with internal staff, external expertise and Datix consultants can deliver results in double quick time. We congratulate Kim Fox and Newham PCT on one of the fastest deployment of Datix we have seen in the NHS."

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