A NEW NHS toolkit launched this week will help NHS trusts implement an electronic 24-hour discharge summary allowing GPs, patients and carers to continue care effectively following a stay in hospital.
The web-based implementation toolkit was produced by the Department of Health Informatics Directorate and has been tested by five NHS Foundation Trusts. It contains case studies and short video clips from trusts who have implemented the 24-hour discharge summary. The toolkit can be used by any trust, at any stage in their implementation cycle to introduce the use of the approved national Academy of Medical Royal Colleges (AoMRC) standard into their system.
Professor John Williams, director of the RCP’s Health Informatics Unit, said: "This website will help trusts implement the standards we developed, and by doing so improve the quality, accuracy and consistency of information that is passed to GPs, patients and carers. We believe this will bring great benefits to the quality and safety of patient care."
The Health Informatics Unit at the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) developed clinical standards for the structure and content of the discharge summary as part of a wider project on generic medical records standards. This was in response to the generally poor quality of discharge summaries, which can be incomplete, inaccurate, or even illegible and can lead to poor patient care.
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