Ramsay Health Care UK, one of the leading providers of independent hospital services in England, has signed a 10-year contract with IMS MAXIMS to provide an open source electronic patient record (EPR) system and clinical modules to improve patient satisfaction and outcomes.
The agreement aims to help the independent healthcare sector provider achieve its commitment to continuous service improvement. "It's about putting the patient at the heart of everything we do," says Andrew Till, corporate service director at Ramsay Health Care UK. "We are always striving to provide a safe, high quality seamless service and IT is a cornerstone to achieving this mission."
The contract will see the implementation of the full openMAXIMS product suite released to healthcare providers last summer. Till said he was confident with IMS MAXIMS' open source development processes to enhancing the code in the future.
The suite includes a patient administration system, and solutions for order communications and results, eDischarge, integrated care pathways, theatre scheduling, bed management and clinical noting.
Other functionality to be introduced as part of the contract includes electronic prescribing, medical device integration, voice recognition, direct booking capability, and a pharmacy system.
The move away from paper records will see clinicians access patient information at anytime, in any location, via desktop and mobile devices, supporting productivity improvements. Till said the need to have patient information "readily available" for clinicians at the bedside would increase response times when accessing patient information at the point-of-care.
Furthermore, the integration capabilities of IMS MAXIMS means there is less manual intervention when integrating data across the IT solution set, resulting in a quicker and more coordinated service for both clinicians and patients.
The openMAXIMS technology will be deployed across all 32 Ramsay Health Care UK sites, with an average of 1,500 active concurrent users of the system at any one time.
Till said IMS MAXIMS’ reputation and the range of functionality it could offer was key to selecting the company as the preferred supplier: "IMS MAXIMS is well established in the UK health market. We saw a number of principles in the company that reflected our own ethos at Ramsay such as integrity and professionalism, which wholly supported the commitment to enter a 10-year deal."
Shane Tickell, CEO of IMS MAXIMS, concluded: "As no two healthcare providers, or indeed, no two clinicians are the same, we know how important it is to ensure we meet the clinical, management and financial needs of any organisation when scoping healthcare technology. This contract reflects the hard work and time invested to understand Ramsay’s requirements for a strategic IT solution.
"As we look forward to this long-term partnership, I believe the extensive knowledge and experience of both organisations will enable the delivery of safer, more efficient care for the benefit of patients."
About Ramsay Health Care UK
Ramsay Health Care UK is one of the leading private hospital operators in the UK with 36 facilities across England. These provide a comprehensive range of elective care specialties to insured, self-pay and NHS patients.
About openMAXIMS
Electronic patient record (EPR) provider IMS MAXIMS released the open source code for its full MAXIMS suite, including its electronic patient record and patient administration system (PAS) free of charge to the NHS in June 2014. Earlier this year, IMS MAXIMS was named the only open source EPR and PAS supplier in a ‘catalogue’ designed to support NHS England’s technology fund two, officially called the Integrated Digital Care Fund.
About IMS MAXIMS
IMS MAXIMS is an electronic patient record provider working towards better, safer patient care. Specialists in developing clinical and administrative software solutions for healthcare providers, IMS MAXIMS currently supports more than 150 organisations, 11 million patient records in the UK, and 1.9 million patient records in Ireland, approx 50% of the population, as well as 20,000 users of IMS MAXIMS products.