19 January 2011
Health Minister, Lord Howe, visited Royal Brompton Hospital today to see firsthand the work of paediatric experts who have developed a programme that enables children with breathing problems to get home more quickly. The Health Minister met staff and patients in the hospital’s paediatric intensive care unit and children’s ward.
Lord Howe visited the hospital to see the pioneering work of Dr Gillian Halley and Mr James Woods who have developed e-vent, an award winning database to support decision making and improve communication between hospital and community services. This secure database will help ensure more effective coordination of care for children on long term home ventilation, because they cannot breathe for themselves. Improving communication and offering outreach education and training enables these children to be discharged more quickly from hospital and live at home with their families while ensuring that their medical needs are being fully met.
e-vent won the 2009 NHS London Innovator Award in Healthcare ICT category. Without the new system, discharge from hospital to home can take many months to organise.
Royal Brompton Hospital’s paediatric team offers specialist services for children’s heart and lung disease, and comprehensive paediatric critical care services.Last year (2009-10) was the busiest ever for the hospital’s paediatric heart surgeons, with over 400 operations carried out, many of them complex procedures on newborn babies. Responding rapidly to critically ill children is part of the daily work of the paediatric team, which is a national specialist referral centre for children with heart and lung disorders – the largest in the country for those with heart rhythm problems.
Treatment can be more effective and efficient
Health Minister Lord Howe, said: “This is a very very impressive initiative and I think it is important for others in the NHS to hear more about it. I was particularly interested to see that a project developed in one specialist Trust, which offers patients and their families a much-improved service, also benefits so many other organisations in the health and social care systems.
“As set out in the Health and Social Care Bill we want doctors, who know what the most appropriate care is for their patients, to be able to improve health outcomes by tailoring services to patients' needs. This project not only allows families to be together, but shows how treatment can be more effective and efficient. It will also reduce the cost meaning savings can be channelled back into the NHS to improve services further.”
'Children prefer to be at home'
Dr Gillian Halley, paediatric intensive care consultant at Royal Brompton Hospital, said: “We know from experience that children on long term ventilation who are medically stable would prefer to be at home with their parents, and we have seen significant improvements in their health and general well being after hospital discharge. What the child really needs is to be in a home environment where they can be picked up and cuddled, and have normal bedtimes, bath times and playtimes with their family. Under the current system there are many avoidable delays in discharge from hospital to home resulting in children staying in hospital longer than necessary.
“We are delighted to welcome Health Minister Lord Howe to Royal Brompton Hospital. We hope that the work carried out by the Children’s Long Term Ventilation Service and the e-vent web based pathway will continue to improve the speed at which care packages for children on long term ventilation are delivered, so that they can be discharged from hospital more quickly and be cared for in their own home.”
Read about the Safe and Sustainable review of children's cardiac surgery services that threatens services such as e-vent.
