Prison Solution Lincolnshire

Morton Hall, a semi-open women’s prison near Newark-on-Trent, Lincolnshire, houses 392 offenders from many different social and ethnic backgrounds. After the Primary Care Trust (PCT) became responsible for NHS prison health, the Hall needed an electronic system to help manage its prisoners’ healthcare. With the new system, the prison also saw opportunities to reduce paper flows and save time in the administration of healthcare for the prison population.

The Hall’s healthcare centre, which is located within the prison and has 30 staff members – full-time, part-time and visiting, houses a nurse-led service provided by the local PCT. The centre runs a twenty-four hour service, with an on-call rota in place after 10 p.m.

First on board

Morton Hall was the first prison in the East Midlands to go live with CSC’s prison solution, provided by NHS Connecting for Health, in January 2006. The system is based on the SystmOne GP solution, which is used in GP practices across England.

Before implementing the system, CSC first devoted time to understand how the existing paper-based processes worked in the prison. Because of the nature of prisons, where the opportunities for self-care are extremely limited, the staff follows well-documented processes for every healthcare intervention.

Treating patients sooner

The Hall identified a number of benefits the new system would provide at the start of the project:

• A significant reduction in paper
• Time savings due to fewer manual processes
• An ability to store key patient information in one place.

Once the system was in place, the centre found that it gained additional benefits. For example, the centre’s staff now receives pathology results faster – 24-48 hours compared to one week -- enabling them to begin treatments sooner. The centre is also able to register prisoners for healthcare faster, automatically generate clinic lists, book waiting-list appointments directly on the system, automatically discharge patients to other prisons and generally keep information more current.

Andrea Blakeley, Lincolnshire PCT Business Change and Benefits Lead said: “This is one of the most successful and exciting projects we’ve deployed to date.”