Manx Care using tech that allows for automatic escalation of deteriorating patients

Thu, 12 Oct 2023

Manx Care is reflecting on improvements including the launch of technology that allows for automatic escalation of deteriorating patients.

In May 2023, Manx Care became the first trust in the UK and crown dependencies to integrate their e-observations software, which has been used across adult inpatient areas since 2015, with hard alerting (also known as auto-escalation), to support clinical teams in responding quickly to deteriorating patients.

Patientrack records vital signs at the bedside with automatic calculation of the RCP National Early Warning Score (NEWS), and SmartPage aids communication between ward clinicians and responding teams.

This software has been put in place to help Manx Care’s compliance with the NEWS2 escalation pathway, which ensures the right clinicians are contacted at the right time when a patient starts showing physiological signs of deterioration.

Patientrack detects the deterioration, and SmartPage ensures a timely trigger - providing an extra layer of patient safety, and supporting responding teams by providing a safeguard against human error. 

In addition, functionality has been built in to prevent “bleep fatigue” – ensuring that responding teams are not paged unnecessarily, as this could impact response time.

Not every high-scorer will be for full escalation, and not every low-scorer will be stable, which is why clinical oversight is crucial, and the software has been configured to support Manx Care’s specific workflows and processes. 

 

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