Clinical specialists’ workloads are being stretched like never before as part of the national drive to clear the much-publicised backlogs in elective care and desperately sought-after outpatient appointments.
While NHS England’s delivery plan for tackling these backlogs relies in part on expanding workforce capacity, current staffing gaps mean loading more pressure onto the existing bank of clinical specialists. For these professionals, this means working across multiple sites while balancing the needs of patients, dispersed clinical teams and their own family lives.
The right tools for the job
With so many priorities to balance, it is vital that clinicians have the up-to-date tools they need to perform their duties. Unfortunately, the existing clunky patient record systems aren’t helping with the challenges of remotely consulting with clinical teams, managing referrals or seeking second opinions on patient cases.
Recent NHS England figures reveal that fewer than 25% of Trusts and Foundation Trusts use an EPR that meets required standards. Negotiating SNOMED CT codes, PACS images and summary care records while darting from this hospital to that outpatient clinic is no mean feat for already overworked clinicians.
Effective tools to enable convenient, fast and secure access to colleagues and information can hold the key to unlocking greater flexibility for clinicians working within multidisciplinary teams. This can give them control over their workloads and provide them with the means to be as productive as they can, alongside vital recovery time.
Flexible, secure team working
Designed by clinicians for clinicians, Bleepa combines the intuitive user experience of the most popular consumer messaging apps with the powerful capabilities and security safeguards required to provide the best tech-enabled care.
Wherever they are, specialists can safely access superior clinical grade medical images, discuss patient cases, manage referrals and upload vital documents to a patient’s medical record all from the palm of their hand.
Whether they’re speaking to a patient at their ‘day job’ outpatient clinic, or reviewing case notes at home, Bleepa gives the ability to consult with colleagues via instant messages and comments on medical scans.
Delivering care at the best time
Thankfully, a great deal of multidisciplinary team-working doesn’t require everyone involved to be on an emergency footing 24/7. This means, for example, that a consultant radiologist colleague can send you a message about a particular patient scan which you can then retrieve at a time that fits with your workload, allowing you to take necessary action.
If you have a query about something you see on the scan, you can use simple point and drag tools to make an annotation directly onto the imaging from within the app, which you can then send to your colleague for their opinion.
Meanwhile, a clinician using Bleepa from their smartphone during a patient consultation can take clinical photos, capture the patient’s consent for their direct care use and then have the images uploaded to their medical record and shared with relevant colleagues in a matter of seconds.
Bleepa makes all this possible as it integrates safely into existing IT infrastructure, including PACS, EPR, RIS and LIMS systems.
Finally, remote working doesn’t need to mean weaker data security. Feedback Medical’s manufacturing processes also adhere to ISO 13485, ISO 27001 and the Cyber Essentials Plus security standard, to ensure the highest possible standards of data security.
Clinicians and patients alike can feel reassured that patient data is securely stored and kept up to date, so nothing gets missed.
