Midlands Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
The Access Group is helping health and social care evolve through mobile working; providing easy-to-use software to enable community nurses to read or record notes on one device, at any location.
Rio Mobilise is enabling nurses within the Midlands Partnership NHS Foundation Trust to make more efficient use of their time, improving care.
Community nurses are using Rio Mobilise to save time on administration and make more time for care. More and more people require dedicated, specialist care – especially with an ageing population. Modern healthcare is keeping us alive longer, and so modern software is the solution to ensuring that life is lived comfortably by giving carers more time to do their work.
INTRODUCTION
Rio Mobilise is an app designed to provide greater independence to care staff. They can work on the move more easily and access patient data in Rio EPR (electronic patient records).
The Access Group has been working with Midlands Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (MPFT) to help facilitate these changes, using Rio Mobilise as the tool to empower community nurses while they are out doing their jobs.
Rio Mobilise enables nurses to access and update records while at the patient’s home, reducing the need to return to the office for admin or complete notes at home. This means more face-to-face time with patients and less stress on busy nurses.
HOW ACCESS HELPED
MPFT wanted to modernise its community nursing provision. Carers were finding it difficult to keep up with the admin burden of typing up notes from their appointments during their working day.
The Access Group, in partnership with Totalmobile, helped Midlands Partnership NHS Foundation Trust by rolling out Rio Mobilise across tablet and smartphone devices. With Rio Mobilise, nurses can access and update patient records at the point of care, even when they don’t have signal. They can leave knowing everything has been sorted for the patient and they won’t need to write up notes when they get home, improving time management and staff wellbeing.
By providing software that speeds up the process of accessing and recording data, Access has helped the care provision across Staffordshire and Shropshire. Nurses can spend more time on care - without the frustration of slow administrative duties. This keeps them sharp and more alert to a patient’s needs, and preventative care is an essential part in helping lessen the burden on the NHS.
Rio Mobilise also allows nurses to complete referrals or equipment requests while at the patient’s home, reassuring them that a request has been actioned. A clinical Lead at MPFT commented, "We find it reassures patients when we're out and about… they like the fact that we can send referrals straight away rather than having to wait to get back to an office, because it gives them reassurance that we've taken them seriously".
Rio Mobilise is both easy to learn and easy to use. This means staff can use their work phones or tablets, rather than needing a specialist device. They’re not carrying bulk around, accessing data is quicker, and can be preloaded in case of no signal for mobile data. Recording data is much simpler too, and the information is communicated back to the office saving the need to return to base regularly.
“What we do is we arrive in a patient’s home, we can review notes quite easily. We then can start the visit, we can complete all our notes within the patient’s property, and then end the visit at that point so there’s no bringing back paper, there’s no filing, and it reduces the fact that staff have to return back to the office throughout their working day. We find it reassures patients when we’re out and about”.
Rob Ratcliffe Clinical Lead, District Nurse
THE RESULT
- Quick access to patient records
- Easy-to-use software for taking notes
- Records and notes can be pre-loaded for low/no signal areas
- Secure access for each individual community nurse or care team
- Information communicates back to the office, resulting in 15% fewer returns to base
- Reduced travel costs by 8% to date
- Streamlined referral process from carer to Trust
- Greater client confidence in community carers
- Reduced staff stress from delays to their workflow
- 165 extra visits, per nurse, per year thanks to the app’s assistance
“It benefits me because it makes it better for your time management. You know that when you go into that patient you have done everything for that patient before you leave, instead of thinking ‘I’ve got a thousand notes in my pocket that I need to do when I get back to the office’. So if there’s any issues or anything that you need to take in, or check up on, you can do it because you’ve got the information there in front of you.”
Michaela Whitehurst
Senior Staff Nurse
