Latest News

Topics in this Dawn AC E-Newsletter 

• Dawn AC V7 Supports Shared Care

• Safety Reminder to ‘Yellow’ Book Printer Users

• Dawn AC User Group 18^th / 19^th Sept 2006 Agenda

• How to Exceed Patient’s Expectations?

• Now DNA testing for Warfarin patients!!

Dawn AC V7 Supports Shared Care

The web browser version of Dawn AC is able to support both hospital based clinics as well as GPs in their practices. It is government policy here in the UK to take care 'into the community' and primary care.

Version 7 is highly configurable and supports many care models. For example, the specialist hospital centres could manage the dosing for GPs and still allow GPs to do the final authorisation of the dose and so fulfil their government (GMS) contract. GPs could also manage their own patients directly on the centralised database and when specialised help is required the patient can be readily referred to specialist at the hospital. High street retail pharmacists could work on the same basis.

If initially there is no network infrastructure to support this, V7 can send emails back to GPs and also GPs can have their own local copy of Dawn AC which can be merged into the central database at a later date.

For more information on possible models please contact us

Safety Reminder to ‘Yellow’ Book Printer Users

If you change your computer or have it reconfigured in any way, say with other new software/hardware, please remember to ensure that the printer driver is configured to print directly to the printer instead of spooling print jobs for safe operation of the book printer. This prevents the wrong instruction from previous patients being printed if the operator does not work rigorously with the barcode reader checks. 

Dawn AC User Group 18^th / 19^th Sept 2006 Agenda

You should have received your invitation to this year’s user group, which is in a more accessible location near the picturesque Lake Ullswater, just off the M6 motorway. If you have not received an invitation please drop me an e-mail.

Do not miss out; we have some great talks lined up for this year’s User Group Meeting, as you can see from the agenda below.

We can also ensure some detailed demonstrations of the new Version 7 Dawn Anticoagulation Software. Please send in your application form as soon as possible to ensure a reservation. The agenda has been updated as follows…

Latest: Dr G Dolan, Consultant Haematologist, Nottingham Queen’s Medical Centre will talk on: “The UK National Patient Safety Agency recommendations on warfarin?”

How to Exceed Patient’s Expectations?

Patient’s note or perceive the things that go wrong, and very seldom notice the things that go well. 

When everything is performing well the patient does not notice this. It is the exceptions, which they notice and remember.

Some major organisations use a technique called Six Sigma. This sets a goal of how many defects per so many opportunities.  A defect is anything that causes patient dissatisfaction. Six Sigma is a failure rate of 3.4 per million procedures or 99.9997%...

Sigma is a statistical unit measure of the spread or variability of the defect occurrences.  Patients see the variations not the average. Managers tend to focus on averages. What’s my average % Time in range? Not how many patients had very high or very low INRs?

manage between three and four sigma e.g. 900 high/low INRs per year say for a 2000 patient service with 15 INR tests per year per patient. A six-sigma organisation would achieve nine high/low INRs in 100 years

 If you aim to exceed the patient’s’ expectations, you must concentrate at removing the variations in your practices. If you need help please contact us.

Now DNA testing for Warfarin patients!!

The US Foods and Drugs Administration (FDA) is expected to announce new labeling for Warfarin, recommending genetic testing to ensure the drug's safe use.  "There is no question that Warfarin has been highly successful in reducing mortality in patients with atrial fibrillation or those at risk of ischemic stroke," explained PGXL Laboratories President Roland Valdes Jr., PhD, FACB. "However, the frequent occurrence of genetic variations that affect how patients metabolize and respond to the medication has made

Warfarin a mixed blessing, until now."

Syd Stewart

 © 2006 4S Information Systems Ltd