NHS Trust Pioneers New Online System to Improve Patient Safety

MANCHESTER, England, April 25, 2014 /PRNewswire/ --

Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, an internationally renowned centre of excellence for patient care, has become the first UK Trust to implement a healthcare industry representative credentialing system widely used in the US to improve patient safety and infection control.

The Trust includes two large teaching hospitals, Leeds General Infirmary and St James's University Hospital, as well as four smaller sites, which among them see around 1.5 million patients a year. It went fully live with the Reptrax system from IntelliCentrics at the beginning of April.  

The online system allows hospitals to control access by healthcare industry representatives, by ensuring only those that comply with the hospital's specific policies gain access. Around 30 representatives from among 500 companies are on Trust premises at any one time.

Entry requirements are decided by individual hospitals but can include an up-to-date DBS (previously CRB) check, relevant immunisations and professional accreditations.  Rather than hospital staff having to conduct the checks, healthcare industry representatives pre-register via the Reptrax system, which confirms their compliance status when they arrive on site, ensuring a secure, streamlined process.

Benefits of the system include:

• safeguarding patients by controlling access to sensitive areas
• improved infection control
• protecting patients, staff and the public from unqualified or inappropriate individuals
• quick and easy implementation of hospital safety and security access policies, ensuring that industry representatives enter premises on the Trust's terms

The system also helps with procurement, by making it harder for healthcare industry representatives to circumnavigate central buying policies through unscheduled visits to individual clinicians.

George Anderson, senior category manager at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust said: "Effective monitoring and control of third party visitors is a challenge for any NHS Trust, particularly one as large as ours.

"We're committed to innovation and so when we discovered IntelliCentrics, and the concept of healthcare industry representative credentialing, which is already commonplace in the US, it became clear that the Reptrax system was the right solution for us. IntelliCentrics has created a system that is tailored to the particular needs of our Trust."

He added: "Vendor companies have reacted well to the system since we launched. We are initially introducing it in theatre areas where patients are most vulnerable, and plan to roll it out across other important patient areas in the coming months, including radiology."

IntelliCentrics' Reptrax solution is the market-leading credentialing system in the US, where it is now used by more than 6,000 healthcare facilities.

Following strong interest from a number of NHS Trusts, the company launched a UK arm - with a service tailored for UK requirements.

Azadar Shah, Managing Director of IntelliCentrics in the UK, said: "We are very proud to partner with such an innovative and respected Trust on this new safety and security initiative for the NHS.

"While as yet a little-known concept in the UK, I believe that healthcare industry representative credentialing will become a widely used technology as hospitals and other public facilities look to improve the implementation of their safety and security access policies."