Orion Health, a leading provider of clinical workflow and integration technology for the healthcare sector, announced its participation in the National Event for Recurring Admission Patient Alerts (RAPA) being held at King's Mill Hospital in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, on Thursday May 15th, 2008. The Event involved attendees from around the NHS in England coming together to discuss ways to reduce unplanned acute admissions by patients who are frequent users of NHS services.
Patients with chronic conditions (such as congestive heart failure and diabetes) as well as cancer may become frequent users of acute services. The ability to better monitor the care of such individuals can result in fewer instances of exacerbation of their disease, and therefore reduce avoidable demand for acute services and bed days consumed.
The Event at King's Mill Hospital will focus on the skills, workflow and technologies required immediately to alert care teams to unplanned hospital attendances by these frequently admitted patients.
Themes to be covered during the Event include a demonstration of RAPA in action, the requirements to implement a RAPA process, as well as the benefits, challenges and recommendations for best practice.
Sherwood Forest Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust have implemented RAPA pathways using Orion Health software for three key clinical teams:
- Community Matrons / Longterm Care Management
- Heart Failure Team
- Cancer Network
Using Orion Health's software, patients who frequently present to the hospital Accident and Emergency (A&E) can be enrolled into a Recurring Admission Patient Alert (RAPA) pathway. Once a patient is enrolled, the appropriate team of clinicians are automatically alerted whenever the patient registers at an A&E facility.
"NHS Trusts are continually focusing on ways to improve care to chronically ill patients," said Simon Philpott, UK and Ireland Director for Orion Health. 2We believe the RAPA concept gives care teams an effective tool that supports better practice and over time can reduce the number of hospital bed-days consumed by these patients."
Related news articles:
- Orion Health's Profile
About Orion Health
Orion Health's easy-to-use solutions and applications improve patient care and clinical decision making by providing integrated health data in a single, unified view. By enhancing existing healthcare information systems, Orion Healths Rhapsody integration engine, Concerto clinical portal, and workflow solutions provide healthcare workers with easy access to patient data and trends, and reduce errors and omissions by streamlining information transfer.
Worldwide, Orion Health is implementing health information communities involving over 35 million patients with tens of thousands of active users. Orion Health's partners include leading health system integrators and IT vendors such as Accenture, IBM, Oracle Corporation and others. Orion Health has more than 1,000 clients around the world, including University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, the Ministry Of Health And Consumer Protection of the Balearic Islands (IB-Salut), the Ministry of Health of Valencia, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). More information can be found at www.orionhealth.com.