Ashford and St Peter’s shows the way with automated outpatient check-in

A complete outpatient check-in solution at Ashford and St Peter’s NHS Foundation Trust includes Savience’s innovative ClearPath 3D way finding module to help guide patients.

The check-in system is installed across two distinct hospital sites but provides a single, consistent view of all outpatient activity across the trust. The larger of the two hospitals, St Peter’s Hospital in Chertsey, employs check-in systems at seven separate reception areas for people attending outpatient clinics and radiology. Similar to familiar streetmap applications, ClearPath provides a virtual representation of the hospitals to help direct patients to the right place.

There are 19 kiosks across both hospitals, plus 15 patient information and call screens. The system currently supports 75 concurrent users.

Savience delivered the solution in six distinct phases in the final three months of 2013. The final piece of the jigsaw, a link to the radiology system, was completed in January 2014.

A real-time bi-directional HL7 interface links the trust’s Clinicom patient administration system (PAS) and Savience modules. HL7 interface is also the conduit to link the HSS radiology information system (RIS) with Savience. These interfaces ensure that patients can use any of the kiosks and will be directed to the right place and that either the PAS or RIS is updated instantly with the arrival message and any new details.

Similarly, changes made in the PAS, for example to appointment times, are immediately reflected in the Savience system so ensuring the data is up-to-date when the patient arrives.

The trust handles an average 30,000 outpatient attendances monthly, across multiple clinic areas at both hospitals.