eConsult wins contract with Homerton Emergency Department to help reduce waiting times

eConsult have won a contract to implement their eTriage system in Homerton Emergency Department to enable an electronic check-in service.

The implementation will strengthen the hospital’s ability to meet its government-set target of assessing walk-in patients within 15 minutes. By accelerating the process of prioritising and triaging patients in urgent care (UC) centres and emergency departments (EDs), the solution will also significantly reduce waiting times and enhance patient safety. 

eTriage – an electronic check-in service that uses algorithm-based questions about symptoms and medical history – quickly identifies the sickest patients and categorises walk-ins into five different priority categories (P1 – P5). The end-to-end system integrates eTriage with the hospital’s workflow and Cerner’s clinical software and will process 350 walk-in patients per day, with a projected average completion time of 5.4 minutes (based on data from over 250,000 patient journeys in A&E departments using eTriage).

A recent study conducted by eConsult revealed that nearly two thirds (64 per cent) of UK patients who visited A&E in the last 12 months would feel confident or somewhat confident using an electronic self-check-in system to speed up the triage process, with just 12 per cent against the idea.

Mark Harmon, Practising A&E Doctor and Chief Strategy Officer at eConsult comments: “There is currently unprecedented pressure on A&E departments who have been hit with a wave of post-lockdown walk-ins and have faced one of the busiest and toughest winters on record. Against this backdrop, we are proud to partner with the team at Homerton and our friends at Cerner to deliver a solution that will help support clinicians, hospital staff and patients through this challenging period and beyond.”