Whittington Health delivers patient safety framework for new integrated health community using Datix

Whittington Health, established from the integration of the The Whittington Hospital NHS Trust with the community health services of Islington and Haringey Primary Care Trusts and Islington social services in 2011, has deployed Datix patient safety software. The organisation, which employs over 4,500 people serving a catchment population of 440,000, is using Datix to create a single patient safety framework that manages adverse incidents, risks, claims and complaints plus health and safety across the new Integrated Care Organisation (ICO).
Datix was first installed by Whittington Hospital NHS Trust in July 2007 to replace the previous manual process for managing all patient safety, health and safety incidents as well as claims and complaints at the hospital. The formation of Whittington Health in 2011 created a new set of challenges. In addition to more patients and 2,000 additional staff, the increased emphasis on delivering a wider range of community care services meant that a diverse range of professionals including district nurses, health visitors, nutritionists, podiatrists and sexual health specialists also needed access to the Datix system.

After conducting a comprehensive Datix Health Check to determine the feasibility of Datix as the ICO’s system of choice, Datix demonstrated that it still offered the best solution in the marketplace combining superior functionality with maximum value for money. On 1st April, 2012, Whittington Health went live with the latest version of Datix (v11) for the new Integrated Care Organisation.

Liz Bennett, Datix Manager and Risk Manager at Whittington Health, commented, “Datix has given us a powerful, fully integrated platform for managing all incidents, risks, claims and complaints across the organisation. It gives us the flexibility we need to build on the openness we have with GPs, community and council partners and achieve ambitious levels of quality health care for our patients.”

Datix has delivered a range of benefits to managers, staff and patients, in particular vastly improved incident reporting. Datix has enabled Whittington Health to introduce consistent ways of working that save time and boost productivity. There is now a three-step process for incident reporting followed by 4,500 Datix users. The user-friendliness of the Datix system has meant that Liz Bennett was able to train all 600 managers in a short period of time enabling them to pass on the same level of quality training to their own staff quickly and consistently.

Next on the horizon is the imminent launch of the Datix Dashboards facility. This will enable directors from different divisions to review data relating to traditionally siloed areas of information, such as incidents and complaints, on one page. In addition Whittington Health will shortly deploy Datix Hotspots to help identify areas where increased levels of incidents may be a cause for concern and then automatically flag up when those incidents reach certain breach thresholds over a given timeframe.

The deployment of Datix has been so important to putting patient safety at the heart of Whittington Health that it recently won an accolade for Liz Bennett herself. As project leader, she received an “Excellence Award” presented by the CEO of Whittington Health for leading the ICO Datix project to successful implementation.

Jonathan Hazan, CEO of Datix, concluded, “With decades of experience developing watertight solutions for the NHS, Datix provides the perfect vehicle for ambitious and innovative organisations like Whittington Health which strive for excellence and put patients at the heart of everything they do. Our technology enables best-practice ways of working that demonstrably drive continual improvement and support the incident and risk management aims of an organisation.”