Rowan Hillson Inpatient Safety Award 2023: a new online patient flagging system for effective and safe diabetes patients’ follow-up when discharged from hospital

Abstract

One of the biggest challenges in improving patient safety is identifying them promptly when discharging them from hospital to allow effective planning of follow-ups. Previously, our diabetes team had to undergo a manually laborious pathway to achieve this, thereby risking delays and patient safety, and making poor use of time. When our hospital adopted the new software NerveCentre, we took this as an opportunity to make changes within the system to improve this aspect of diabetes care. NerveCentre initially had minimal diabetes care features. By working closely and meticulously with the company and hospital IT department, we developed a new diabetes ‘dashboard’ in the software that allows all diabetes inpatients to be flagged up effectively to the diabetes team, both upon admission and upon discharge. The dashboard could also hold all the important diabetes information relevant to the patient. This initiative was made possible with a great team understanding of the available resources and which aspects of inpatient diabetes care needed to be improved. We now have a safer and more efficient pathway for following up on diabetes patients upon discharge. This is also evident in our 3-month data: they show a 100% follow-up rate, timely telephone follow-up when required, and that fewer outpatient face-to-face clinic appointments are needed. We received positive feedback from healthcare members and patients. In addition, our initiatives are also easily translatable to other electronic software or adaptable by other hospitals. We are grateful to be winners of the prestigious Rowan Hillson Inpatient Safety Award 2023, and we hope that this will serve as a platform to allow greater exposure of this project idea to other healthcare professionals.