Toshiba TEC provides the perfect prescription for Chesterfield Royal Hospital

When Chesterfield Royal Hospital needed to improve the way in which it processed prescriptions for patients, it turned to a state-of-the-art mobile printing solution from Toshiba TEC.

Providing a full range of acute services, as well as 24-hour accident and emergency care and specialist children’s services, to people across north-east Derbyshire, Chesterfield Royal Hospital aims to be a first class district general hospital (DGH) – the model for what a DGH can be in the service of its community. With 3,500 staff delivering high quality clinical care across 19 wards and 569 general and acute beds, work also recently started on the new £9m Chesterfield Royal Macmillan Cancer Centre, built in partnership with Macmillan Cancer Support, which will bring all cancer services under one roof and is due to be opened by the end of 2016.

Best practice

In order to fulfil its objective of continual improvement, Chesterfield Royal Hospital wanted to address how it could be more responsive and improve the management of medicines at the bedside.

Martin Shepherd, Chesterfield Royal Hospital’s Chief Pharmacist, explains, ‘Even though we had fixed location hardwired printers on the wards, labelling of patients medicines for use during admission and day discharge could be a laborious and time consuming process. As hardwired printers can only be in one place at a time, staff had to constantly go backwards and forwards to where they were located. The problem was compounded by the fact that we didn't have enough printers and staff would sometimes have to queue up to use them during busy periods.’

Shepherd wanted a more flexible printing system to address this issue, so that patient’s medicines could be safely and appropriately labelled and ready to use in as little time as possible. In order to find out what could be done, he asked Toshiba TEC for its advice and after carrying out a comprehensive audit to understand the functionality required, it was agreed that the company’s Toshiba B-EP2 portable handheld printers would tick all the boxes.

On the move

Perfect for a use as part of a mobile pharmacy, the compact and stylish two-inch Toshiba B-EP2 is the ultimate in wireless functionality and reliability on the move. Allowing medication to be administered at the bedside, it quickly produces high quality, accurate labels, with the flexibility of many different label sizes. This means that the patient experience is vastly improved and hospital beds can be freed up faster. 

Becky Viccars, Marketing Manager at Toshiba TEC, says, ‘We understand the pressure healthcare organisations are under to manage costs and improve efficiencies, with customer care as the primary objective. Designed for easy integration into existing systems, the Toshiba B-EP2 is already widely used in a diverse range of applications throughout the healthcare sector, with proven operational benefits.’

Interoperability was an important consideration for Chesterfield Royal Hospital, which needed a solution that could be easily linked to its already installed JAC system. JAC provides a single integrated medicines management solution consisting of pharmacy stock control, e-prescribing and medicines administration. Martin Shepherd comments, ‘All of our systems need to work in harmony and the Toshiba B-EP2 is one of the only devices that is able to work reliably with JAC.’ 

The advantages of the Toshiba B-EP2 don't end there – the clear backlit LCD screen is powered by a high endurance lithium-ion battery technology to ensure many hours of operation. In busy environments like Chesterfield Royal Hospital, ruggedness is vital for portable handheld products, as they are carried around on the wards all day, so the devices come with in-built rubber corners that can easily withstand being dropped from heights up to 1.8m.

Benefit check

No-one likes to spend any more time in hospital than they have to, so as well as allowing staff to spend their time more effectively, the B-EP2’s also have benefits for patients by improving access to their medicines and facilitating a faster discharge process. This new decentralised service has improved responsiveness and decision making, allowing faster processing without compromising patient safety.

The hospital’s 4 B-EP2’s are currently used across two, of the hospital’s largest specialities, and allocated wherever demand is highest, therefore increasing flexibility and utilising limited staff resource more effectively. The plan is to rollout more B-EP2’s across other wards in due course.

Martin Shepherd is delighted with the impact that the introduction of the B-EP2’s has made and concludes, ‘Delivering sustainable high quality clinical care, offering an exceptional experience for our patients and creating a great place for our staff to work are amongst our key objectives as an organisation. Any technology that can help us achieve a better level of service is welcomed by us and the Toshiba TEC B-EP2 fits firmly in this category.’

Further information is available from Becky Viccars at Toshiba TEC by calling 0843 2244 944, emailing info@toshibatec.co.uk or by vising the website on www.toshibatec.co.uk