Cris Communicator – Improving communications between Radiology, Hospital Wards and GPs

The Radiology Department at St Helens and Knowsley NHS Trust previously utilised a fax and paper based tracking system to support the delivery and receipt of time critical radiology results. The administration of the process was very labour intensive and the system was not auditable, leaving room for error without recourse.

Supported by Wellbeing Software’s development staff, the St Helens and Knowsley radiology department established a pilot user group of GPs and Consultants to use Cris Communicator, which has enabled a significant improvement in patient safety.

The new system – which is fully integrated with the trust’s radiology information system, Cris software – improves reliability and accuracy, and crucially speeds up communication between Radiology and other departments, thus enabling more rapid and effective communication with referrers. You can learn more about teleradiology in this article. With Communicator now installed, emails are sent out automatically to GPs and consultants, and if they don’t respond after 7 days, the email will automatically resend, the same after 14 days. This has now been so successful the team has reduced the ‘reminder email’ to 5 days and then clerical intervention to 5 days after that.

Denise Twist, Radiology Governance Lead, St Helens and Knowsley NHS Trust said:

“If a patient has something seriously wrong with them the report can be with the referrer within minutes of being verified. We have impressive evidence to demonstrate the speed of the ultrasound report solution. We can see a patient, carry out an ultrasound and have the report back in 20 minutes; it’s incredible. I would definitely highly recommend Cris Communicator to other hospitals – I am delighted with the way it has improved both process and patient safety.”