Background During 2021, Lindsey Lodge Hospice and Healthcare felt a move to electronic prescribing would be the next natural step in our journey to becoming paper light, with additional benefits for safety and care delivery. SystmOne was already used for patient records, therefore SystmOne prescribing facility was the preferred system. Very few hospices were using electronic prescribing, with no ‘footprint’ for how to develop it.

Aims The main aims were to improve safety and quality of prescriptions, care delivery, reduce paper use and to improve remote prescribing for out of hours.

Methods The roll out involved a number of steps:

• Migrating to Palliative Hospital module.

• Training from the system provider.

• Enhancing Wi–Fi coverage throughout the unit.

• Purchase of suitable Workstations on Wheels (WOWs).

• Purchase of laptops for on–call doctors.

• Populating the hospice formulary into the electronic system.

• Training of staff.

• Installation of a Listener Client for Business Continuity.

Lessons were learned along the process that could be shared with other providers considering rolling out electronic prescribing. The system went live February 2022.

Results Patient safety and quality of care has been enhanced – prescribing errors reduced by 15% in the first year, timely prescriptions out of hours (including controlled drugs). The hospice has reduced paper usage to assist in environmental sustainability, albeit increased use of electronic devices. The SystmOne reporting tools have provided data to assist with more intelligent stock supply and figures on number of administrations allows a percentage error rate for monitoring through Quality Governance.

Discharge documentation is auto-populated from the medication chart to reduce error and omissions on the transfer of information to GPs.

Conclusion Electronic prescribing in hospice inpatient units is safe and effective.

Next steps: embed pharmacy order forms for auto-population to reduce human error and streamline this process.