McKesson News

- McKesson is -Enterprise-wide visual control provides real-time data to help
'release time to care' - 

King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, one of London’s largest and busiest NHS teaching hospitals, has selected McKesson’s Horizon Enterprise Visibility (HEV) – a visual control system designed specifically for hospitals – to further its ‘Releasing Time to Care: The Productive Ward’ programme. Moving away from manual whiteboards to an interactive electronic system will provide King’s with real-time visibility of room availability, patient location and the current status of a patient’s treatment, creating more time for patient care.

King’s and McKesson will be working in close partnership to roll out HEV across the Trust, with the aim of going live in October 2009 in time for the winter months, one of the busiest periods of the year for the NHS. King’s hopes to improve bed management and patient flow with HEV by making sure that length of stay is not unduly affected by process issues.

The electronic whiteboard is designed to sit at ward level across a hospital and works by taking feeds from the hospital’s disparate information systems and displaying patient flow information using colour-coded, time-stamped icons against a hospital floor plan. The information is displayed on large format LCD screens and is highly intuitive. It allows staff to see at a glance when beds are free and who is waiting to be discharged, as well as flagging up patient safety issues and the availability of imaging results, lab results and prescriptions.

Simon Taylor, Chief Financial Officer at King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, comments, “When we started to look at systems that could meet our requirements, HEV had a layer of functionality above the rest of the solutions on the market. As well as showing centrally managed bed states in real-time, HEV displays patient and ward information in a map that relates to the ward on the ground, rather than a list or a block diagram, making it much easier for staff to see and use information from across the hospital. The system is very intuitive, allowing staff to spend more time with patients, improving efficiency in hospital management and communication between staff, and ultimately improving the patient experience.”

Simon continues, “We are confident that McKesson’s proven expertise in healthcare IT will enable us to get the most out of HEV.  Once implemented, all staff will be able to access the right information at the right time without the need to log on to a computer in each instance.  This will help us save time as well as providing staff with greater patient/ward knowledge, reducing waiting times, and improving patient flow.” 

Neil Spragg, Vice President Business Intelligence and Commissioning at McKesson, concludes, “At McKesson we are committed to deliver best-of-breed solutions to the healthcare sector.  With our extensive clinical knowledge and dedicated understanding of the healthcare industry, we remain an industry-leading healthcare information technology provider. Our customers are particularly aware of the benefits of working with a partner whose only business is healthcare. We are confident that Horizon Enterprise Visibility will bring overall efficiency to King’s through greater cross-ward communication with immediate effects. But most importantly the system will help all healthcare staff at the hospital to work more efficiently and will substantially advance their “releasing time to care” programme, which will ultimately improve the service delivered to patients.”

###

About King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust

King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust is one of the UK’s largest and busiest teaching hospitals, with over 6,000 staff providing around 700,000 patient contacts a year.  King’s has a unique profile, with a full range of local hospital services for people in the London boroughs of Lambeth and Southwark as well as specialist services to patients from further afield.  The Trust is recognized internationally for its work in liver disease and transplantation, neurosciences, cardiac and haemato-oncology.  King’s also plays a key role in the training and education of medical, nursing and dental students with its academic partner, King’s College London.  For more information, visit www.kch.nhs.uk

King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust is part of King’s Health Partners Academic Health Sciences Centre (AHSC), a pioneering collaboration between King’s College London, and Guy’s and St Thomas’, King’s College Hospital and South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trusts.  King’s Health Partners is one of only five AHSCs in the UK and brings together an unrivalled range and depth of clinical and research expertise, spanning both physical and mental health. Our combined strengths will drive improvements in care for patients, allowing them to benefit from breakthroughs in medical science and receive leading edge treatment at the earliest possible opportunity.  For more information, visit www.kingshealthpartners.org

About McKesson UK

McKesson has operated in the UK since 1991 and has a dedicated 500 strong workforce delivering to virtually every NHS organisation as well as to a number of other public and private sector organisations. As guardians of the world’s largest integrated HR and Payroll system – ESR; McKesson pays 7% of the working population in England and Wales, a workforce of more than 1.3 million NHS employees.  McKesson services include:

Workforce Solutions – Through intrinsic experience in delivering ESR, McKesson is uniquely positioned to offer an end-to-end workforce solution for the NHS to include Rostering, Time and Attendance, HR and Payroll Shared Services, Professional Services and Training. McKesson is able to deliver what no other vendor can: in-depth system, people and process knowledge, access to the highest level of system training, immediate access to support staff, and most importantly, accountability.

Clinical and Business Intelligence – McKesson fosters a patient-centric approach to Care and Resource Utilisation which is centred on its world class evidence-based clinical decision support tools to affect appropriateness of care. McKesson is working with Healthcare Commissioners and Providers to develop and support clinical evidence-based competence in healthcare in order to realise productivity gains and cost reduction. In addition, McKesson’s Child Health solution meets and in many areas exceeds the "Child Health Informatics Consortium" specification, considered to be the 'de-facto' standard.

McKesson UK is a subsidiary of McKesson Corporation, which currently ranks 15th on the FORTUNE 500. McKesson is the longest-operating company in healthcare today, with over 175 years experience. Globally, McKesson employs more than 32,000 staff providing information technology, pharmaceuticals, pharmacy automation and disease management solutions to support healthcare delivery in a number of countries. Throughout the world, McKesson is a company dedicated to helping its customers deliver high-quality healthcare by reducing costs, streamlining processes, and improving the quality and safety of patient care.