businessinfomag.uk
magazine
32
Mobile Print
The printers
have reduced
waiting times
for patients,
improved
accuracy and
speeded up the
discharge
process
Providing acute hospital services for over 300,000 people in
Northamptonshire and beyond, Kettering General Hospital NHS
Foundation Trust uses industry leading mobile printing solutions from
Toshiba TEC as part of its pharmacy and dispensary operation.
Kettering General Hospital has
served its local community since
1897 and aims to provide the highest
standards of care for patients and to
fully support carers and visitors. It
became an NHS Trust in 1994 and a
Foundation Trust in November 2008.
A medium-sized facility with
600 inpatient beds and 17 theatres,
Kettering General Hospital has invested
significantly in its estate in recent years,
including a £18m Treatment Centre, a
£4.7m Cardiac Centre and, in 2013, a
£30m ward block. Called the Foundation
Wing, this provides additional
critical care facilities, as well as
paediatric inpatient and outpatient
accommodation.
More than 3,200 staff work at
Kettering General Hospital and its
printing and document management
infrastructure plays a vital role in
the smooth running of all areas of
operation, not least pharmacy and
dispensary. Like other parts of the
building, this has recently undergone
refurbishment, including the
deployment of technology that can help
implement recommendations made by
Lord Carter on how to save money and
improve care.
“Lord Carter recommends that
NHS trusts use at least 80% of
their pharmacist resource for direct
medicines optimisation activities,
medicines governance and safety
remits,” explains Medicines Information
Pharmacist Anthony Bartlett. “By
April 2017, each NHS Trust should
have undertaken a Hospital Pharmacy
Transformation Programme (HPTP) to
develop plans to increase pharmacist
prescribers, electronic prescribing and
administration, accurate cost coding
of medicines, and consolidate stock
holding by April 2020. Pharmacists
all over the country are currently
looking at how they can improve that
communication gap and information
flow around patients, but it is already
clear that the only way to do that is by
using modern IT solutions.”
Ward-based dispensing
One way to comply with the Carter
Directive is to implement ward-based
dispensing of medicines to facilitate the
fast discharge of patients, which Anthony
Bartlett and the Pharmacy team have
been able to achieve through the use of
Toshiba EP4 Bluetooth Mobile Printers.
Bartlett says he heard about this
solution from a case study on its use
at Chesterfield Royal Hospital NHS
Foundation Trust. “It was clear that both
hospitals shared many of the same
concerns, so I decided to contact Toshiba
TEC to see what it could recommend
for us. Traditionally, labelling can be a
laborious and time-consuming process,
which relies on pieces of paper and
documentation being transferred from
one location to another, with staff
having to constantly go backwards and
forwards.We needed to change that.”
Moving on up
Toshiba recommended the battery-
operated Toshiba EP4 Bluetooth Mobile
Printer as the most appropriate solution
The right prescription
for the printing of TTA labels for ward
dispensing.
Becky Viccars, Marketing Manager at
Toshiba TEC, explains: “The compact and
stylish four-inch Toshiba EP4 is perfect for
a use as part of a mobile pharmacy, as it
provides unrivalled wireless functionality
and reliability on the move. It quickly
produces high quality, accurate labels,
with the flexibility of many different
label sizes, which means that the patient
experience is vastly improved.”
She adds: “With a clear backlit LCD
screen, the devices areWi-Fi enabled
and come with USB 2.0 as standard.
Ruggedness is vital for portable handheld
products used in hospitals, and the
in-built rubber corners easily withstand
being dropped from heights of up to
1.5m. Battery charging is quick and
easy and the large media capacity
means media needs to be changed less
frequently. And, with no cores required
on the rolls, there is minimal waste.”
In the flow
It is estimated that 75% of UK NHS
Trusts use the EMIS Ascribe software,
including Kettering General Hospital.
By working closely with Toshiba TEC’s
technical team, integration between the
software and the Toshiba EP4 devices
has been seamless, enhancing ward-
based clinical services such as medicines
management and electronic prescribing
and medicine administration.
By reducing time spent labelling, the
solution enables staff to spend their time
more productively. It has also reduced
waiting times for patients, improved
accuracy and speeded up the discharge
process, much to the delight of Anthony
Bartlett.
“Adopting Toshiba TEC’s state-of-
the-art mobile printing technology
has exceeded all expectations and it is
helping us to work faster and smarter,”
he enthuses. “Not only that, we are
very much in line with Lord Carter’s
recommendations and are well underway
with our HPTP. The excellent support and
back-up we’ve received has made the
process incredibly smooth and I would
highly recommend Toshiba TEC’s products
and services to any other NHS Trust
hospitals that are looking to embark on a
similar programme of improvement.”
Benefits
n
Patients can be discharged faster
n
Pressure taken off dispensary
n
Reduces risk of patients getting the wrong medicine
n
Patient experience improved
n
Patients own medication can be relabelled – no need to
dispense from the hospital stock
n
Patients medication can be relabelled on the ward if the
dose changes
n
Helps with Carter Report compliance
