Southern Cross rolls out electronic clinical notes

NEWS

Southern Cross Healthcare is rolling out electronic clinical notes across its hospital network.

The implementation is part of an overall patient record upgrade by Southern Cross Healthcare, with the goal of having a paperless patient record by the end of 2022. 

The next phase of the programme will involve rolling out e-vitals and developing a medication management solution.

Roll-out began in December 2020 and nearly 200,000 notes have been logged electronically across Southern Cross’ 15 wholly owned and joint venture hospitals. The organisation estimates that once fully deployed, more than one million individual clinical notes will be captured and viewed online each year. 

Southern Cross Healthcare’s director of nursing and clinical lead for the programme, Carey Campbell, says moving away from handwritten clinical notes means safer and more effective healthcare. 

“Electronic clinical notes give immediate access to critical patient information, as opposed to having to wait for a single hard copy file,” she says. 

“It also enables better clinical decision making and medical specialists can access information remotely to assist with monitoring patients.”

Campbell says nursing staff generally write notes every two hours as part of their patient rounds and many report that it is much faster to log patient notes online rather than on paper.

Staff will ultimately be able to update patient files using smartphones at the bedside, as well as on tablets and computers.

Southern Cross Healthcare partnered with Orion Health to configure the digital patient notes solution.