Burwood switches to electronic clinical notes

NEWS - eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth

Around 750 staff at Burwood Hospital are now creating and viewing patient notes online.

Cortex is a mobile app that allows doctors, nurses and allied health staff to document and view clinical notes as well as access results and observations.

Clinical teams can also use it for task management and electronic ordering of diagnostic tests.

Cortex went live at Christchurch Hospital in 2017 and was implemented across the whole of Burwood Hospital in January this year.

Project manager Alana Reid says Burwood previously relied on paper for patient notes, but staff could view electronic notes from Christchurch Hospital and community teams via the Health Connect South portal.

“We were feeling a little bit like a black hole of notes at Burwood, as being on paper we were not visible to other sites, so moving to Cortex really increases our visibility and helps the patient journey,” she says.

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Living documents sit at the top of the timeline and are updated daily to provide a quick view of what is going on with each patient and their care plan.

“Staff that had worked at Christchurch Hospital, were desperately keen for it to come over here,” says Reid.

“There are always some people that are a bit nervous when you add technology into the system, but confidence has really built up as staff realised how simple it is and now people are really excited about it.”

Nurse Amber Loose works on one of the Older Person’s Mental Health wards at Burwood and says moving to an online system means nurses are able to spend more time on the floor with patients, rather than hunting down paper files or writing notes.

Loose helps to coordinate admissions from Christchurch Hospital and can now follow patients on Cortex to see how they are progressing and prioritise them coming over to Burwood. Being able to view psychiatrist notes has been particularly helpful in this.

“It has really improved accessibility and it is easy to document notes efficiently as note writing can take a while,” she says.

“We had ‘at the elbow’ training with a superuser on our ward which felt supportive and meant people could learn at their own pace.”

Around 420 iPads have been supplied to staff and nurses can fit these in their pockets.

“It has been a good change: I am enjoying being online,” Loose says.

Picture: Nurse Amber Loose using Cortex

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