Delivering Safer Care for Women and Babies across Cornwall

Thousands of women across Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly are benefiting from a safer and improved maternity service with the introduction of new software.

Almost 600 staff at Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust’s hospitals and community maternity services are using EuroKing, the market leading maternity information system from Wellbeing Software. The implementation of the software is supporting the Trust’s aim to be paperless by 2020.

Each year, the Trust cares for over 4,000 women and their babies. Before EuroKing was introduced, clinical teams relied on paper records, which women had to bring to each appointment. If part of the record was forgotten or lost, midwives and doctors had limited clinical information. Now, the full record (including scan reports) is available in real time, in one place and most importantly is up to date and accurate.

Angela Whittaker, Matron for Acute Maternity Services and Project Lead said:

“EuroKing has enabled us to really enhance safety across our services. It has also reduced our reliance on paper documentation. The software has helped us to remove at least 20 paper-based forms from our process, replacing them with functions on EuroKing and we are now able to generate and send referral letters electronically. It is saving time and money, and it means the referral goes directly to the right clinician, helping us to maintain high levels of patient confidentiality. Women now have one record that can be accessed wherever they’re receiving care; whether that’s in our antenatal clinic, maternity day unit or a service out in the community.”

Trudie Roberts, Matron for Community Maternity Services said:

“Community midwives are able to access and update patient records while visiting women in local clinics and in their homes. We are looking forward to the Community Offline tool – which will enable access to the patient record when there is no internet connection – expected to go live later this year.”

As well as improving care, the system is also helping to improve the quality of data and enable better auditing of the service. Future developments will include the ability for women to see and input into their own record, as well as introducing a document management system (EDMS system) and integrating EuroKing with other software systems in the Trust.

Wellbeing Software’s Account Director Ross Wade said:

“Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust is passionate about improving the maternity care they offer across the region. We’ve worked closely with the Trust to support the implementation of this digital initiative and make EuroKing really work for their service. I’m delighted that the benefits of our software are already being realised.”