Gateshead Health NHS Foundation Trust (QE Gateshead) are using the Medical Interoperability Gateway (MIG) to increase the speed and accuracy of their A&E services.
QE Gateshead are part of the Great North Care Record, which aims to improve the way patient information is securely shared across the North East and North Cumbria.
Accessing primary care information for inpatients is a common problem for hospitals. If the patient is unconscious or unsure about the details of their medical history, the hospital clinician will request additional information from the patient’s GP. Sometimes it take days for additional information to be received from the GP, which can delay the patient’s treatment.
QE Gateshead wanted to provide their hospital staff with electronic access to a patient’s GP record at the point of care, to avoid delays and improve the standard of care. They felt that by integrating the MIG within their existing clinical system it would make the GP data more accessible to clinicians.
QE Gateshead went live with the MIG in Queen Elizabeth Hospital in December 2016. The MIG was integrated with their Medway Electronic Patient Record (EPR) system to provide the hospital with instant access to the Detailed Care Record service.
Patient facing clinical staff can now view crucial patient information such as medication (current, past and issues), risks and warnings, procedures, investigations, encounters, admissions and referrals. This has improved the accuracy of clinical decisions and saved time in life or death situations.
QE Gateshead staff were asked to complete an evaluation on the effectiveness of the MIG. The responses were extremely positive and the feedback below shows how staff have benefited from the MIG.
“The MIG is vital – medication history is often difficult and mistakes not uncommon. Being able to check MIG greatly increases safety.”
“The MIG is incredibly useful when you are the clerking junior doctor on night shift and an elderly patient cannot tell you their co-morbidities and there are no family around. The information you find out in my experience often directs your diagnosis and treatment decisions. If you had a sick elderly patient overnight, information gleamed from MIG could be vital for making the right decisions regarding resuscitation and escalation decisions.”
"MIG is very useful. It provides timely collateral information, especially out of hours.”
“Quality of patient care at the QE Gateshead is now substantially better directly as a result of this project.”
“MIG is incredibly helpful for on-call shifts in particular. Recently I used it to prescribe for a gentleman in the middle of the bank holiday who did not know his epilepsy medications, and there was no pharmacy/GP available to contact for a couple of days.”
“MIG has helped us track the behaviour/activity of some of our regular service users – we can see when they accessed GP services and check if they are actually telling us the whole story.”
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