Christopher Collinson
26 Oct 2021 · Coroner Rebecca Ollivere · Birmingham and Solihull
The coroner's concerns
1. patients left without assessment
“The current system for allocating patients requires a manual check to see whether a patient has actually been seen once they have been allocated. If they are not seen, there is currently no way of other clinicians being aware of that, and therefore patients could be left for long periods of time without having been assessed.”
2. incorrect medication administration
“The current electronic prescribing system does not require a Doctor to perform a secondary check that they have selected the correct medication. I am concerned that it is all too easy to select the wrong medication, particularly when the department is busy and Doctors are under pressure. This could lead to fatal outcomes for patients if given incorrect medication.”
Responses
2021-0361-Response-from-Queen-Elizabeth-Hospital_Published.pdf ↗· University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust
Stated action · July 2021
“we have rolled out our in-house electronic system, PICS to BHH. PICS has been in use in AMU at BHH since July 2021. PICS provides a paper-free electronic patient record system that allows for simultaneous access and entries to the record of a single patient by multiple clinicians. With PICS, it is easy to access and review patient records at any time. To ensure patients are seen without delay, there are time markers on the system which indicate when patients have been waiting to be seen for a period”