Trust collaboration across patient records saves £4.1 million in 3 years

Guy’s and St Thomas’ has collaborated with King’s College Hospital to avoid 3.3 million duplicate and repeat tests for patients over the past three years, as a result of the two trusts’ combined use of the Epic electronic patient record (EPR).

The partnership has also freed up an estimated 275,000 hours of nursing and phlebotomy time across the two trusts, and spared patients extra blood draws.

Guy’s and St Thomas’ began using the Epic system alongside King’s College Hospital in October 2023, with the need to cut down on repeat tests identified as an early priority.

Three years on, the results are adding up, with the two trusts having saved £4.1 million through reduced duplicate tests, while ensuring patients still get the tests they need.

The electronic patient record system automatically cancels duplicate blood test orders placed within an hour of each other, and it lets clinicians add a test to a sample the lab has already obtained rather than drawing more blood. Both cut costs and workload and spare patients extra blood draws. Across the two trusts, which together serve more than 3 million patients each year, these features have prevented about 2.9 million unnecessary blood tests.

Guy’s and St Thomas’ and King’s College Hospital have also built national and Royal College guidelines into how clinicians order tests and blood products. When a clinician orders a repeat test sooner than the guidelines recommend, an alert shows the patient’s recent results and asks the clinician to confirm the new order. These alerts have prevented more than 384,000 tests and saved about £3.6 million. Similar alerts on blood transfusion orders have prevented more than 6,000 unnecessary blood transfusions, helping conserve the blood supply and saving about £489,000.

Susan Robinson, clinical lead for pathology at Guy’s and St Thomas’, said: “Every test we can safely avoid matters. A repeat test ordered too soon is unlikely to change how we manage a patient, but skipping it spares them a blood draw, frees up more time for our nurses and the lab, and saves money.”

Carmel Curtis, chief of division at King’s College Hospital, said: “Our staff response to this campaign, which we have called ‘Choose Wisely, Test Smartly’, has been fantastic, saving time, money, and discomfort for patients.”

Guy’s and St Thomas’ will now join King’s College Hospital in applying the same approach to imaging, adding interval checks to imaging orders to help avoid repeat scans.

Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust is scheduled to join the trusts’ shared Epic system in April 2027.