A new Discharge Summary Implementation Toolkit is being launched today, 25 July 2011
The step by step interactive guide will help NHS trusts implement an electronic 24 hour discharge summary which will enable a GP, patient or carer to continue care effectively following a stay in hospital.
GPs, patients and carers have over many years expressed discontent about the generally poor quality of discharge summaries, which can be incomplete, inaccurate, or even illegible. This can lead to poor patient care. To meet this need, 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. Now, the Department of Health Informatics Directorate has produced a web-based implementation toolkit, which has been tested by five NHS Foundation Trusts.
The toolkit 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.
For further information, please contact Linda Cuthbertson, head of PR, on +44 (0)203 075 1254 / 0774 877 7919, or email Linda.Cuthbertson@rcplondon.ac.uk