Directing specialist care through email admission alerting

Area of Science:

• Health Informatics
• Patient Safety
• Clinical Systems

Background:

• Unscheduled care is challenging for patients with multiple chronic conditions.
• Ensuring timely specialist care is difficult, potentially impacting patient safety and outcomes.
• Clinical incidents highlight the need for improved care coordination.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe the development and implementation of an automated email alerting system.
• To improve the delivery of specialist care to high-risk patient groups.
• To enhance patient safety and clinical outcomes in unscheduled care settings.

Main Methods:

• Developed an automated email alerting system using Java7 and free software.
• Integrated the system with secure NHS mail accounts for communication.
• The system identifies patient admissions and compares them against monitored patient cohorts.

Main Results:

• The system monitors 6,047 patients across 10 special registers.
• Between May and June 2013, it generated 2,158 alerts for 863 monitored admissions.
• The system has been adopted across multiple hospital specialties with positive reception.

Conclusions:

• The automated alerting system is efficient, effective, and low-cost.
• It demonstrably improves care delivery and impacts patient care positively.
• The system's simplicity and low cost facilitate easy reproduction across the National Health Service (NHS).