Healthcare teams such as child health, old people and rehabilitation, physiotherapy, district nurses and health visitors are using EMIS Web to view demographic data. The system allows the PCT to create bespoke consultation templates for different healthcare teams – each feeding data into a single patient record, which is viewed as appropriate by different practitioners including the patient’s GP.

Two years into the project, EMIS Web is now widely used by 300 community practitioners.

The benefits that NHS Tower Hamlets has experienced include:

• patients’ electronic records are more comprehensive: the data entered by different practitioners gives a rounded view of care.
• data capture to support performance reporting is now done in seconds not weeks.
• using the search and reports module the PCT can now track all childhood immunisations across the whole area and manage call and recall to improve vaccination rates.
• when patients are newly added to a service their data is already on the master patient index. NHS Tower Hamlets estimates that there may be 80 to 100 new registrations per day, saving a significant amount of time by each service not having to input patient details.
• the PCT is developing sophisticated care pathways that will allow them to generate tariff information and relate this activity to episodes of care defined by specific problems or conditions.

Efficiency gains are being made in all of the services that have implemented EMIS Web. Mark Caulfield, information services manager said: “The primary care psychology department has recently deployed the system. The service is commissioned by a number of organisations and is provided from multiple locations. By using all the administrative and clinical functionality provided by EMIS Web, Anne McKay, the psychologist leading the service deployment, has estimated that collectively the team is saving up to 38 hours per week on report production.

“We have seen a considerable reduction in paper collection and multiple databases, resulting in significant rationalisation of data collection across all the teams.

“The system’s data sharing features allow both GPs and community staff to share agreed data sets with confidence.”

Patients not paper

Mark describes EMIS Web as “the technical infrastructure to achieve co-ordinated care, particularly for long term conditions.”

He explains: “Integrated care, particularly for disease management and long term conditions, will only work if you have an integrated primary care system. The result will be integration of primary and community activity.”

NHS Tower Hamlets plans to implement cross-organisational data-sharing with a local hospital Trust and with the local authority social care services.

Further information

For more information about upgrading from an existing EMIS system, please contact us on 0845 123 4455 or email .

For information on moving to EMIS from another clinical system, please contact us on 0845 125 5536 or email .

 the primary care psychology team is saving up to 38 hours per week

Mark Caulfield, information services manager, NHS Tower Hamlets