24 audiologists use the Primus equipment

We sat down with Kirsten Ellis, senior audiologist equipment and tech lead at Southend Hospital in the UK, to discuss how Auditdata’s solutions make it easy, quick, and accurate to deliver best-in-class care for their patients. Southend has 24 audiologists that use Primus, and they have ENT consultants accessing results either through Primus or through the Auditbase viewer.

Ellis has been an audiologist since 2018 and started working at Southend as she finished her Master's degree, doing her clinical placement there.

Southend and Primus

Southend Hospital started working with Auditbase around year 200 and Primus in 2015 – so long before Ellis began working there. When she started, she was familiar with Auditbase, but had not used Primus previously. She found Primus to be intuitive and very easy to learn. The systems she used at her previous hospital were more complex, so she was immediately impressed that Primus was so simple to use.

”With my previous job, you had to go to this screen, and then you had to move this screen, and back to this, and check this. Whereas with Primus, everything was all in one place, which was really nice,” Ellis explained. She added that, after using Primus, she could never go back to the complicated systems she used previously.

Primus Ice

A clinical audiometer the size of an envelope that is ideal for diagnostic audiometry on the move

Primus Pro

An advanced portable audiometer providing everything you need to deliver best practice hearing care

Primus HIT Pro

A advanced hearing instrument test box with outstanding acoustic properties

Primus LS Mini

A portable high-end loudspeaker with optimal REM and RECD capabilities

Southend’s patient volume and process

Southend sees approximately 175 patients per day. They have affiliated clinics, and each typically sees between 10-12 patients daily.

In terms of process, most patients are referred by their GP first. Often, patients have presented their GP with a related problem, whether it's wax or they're having other issues. They get triaged by the GPs, then come to Southend, where the hospital audiologists assess hem, as well, to see if it's an appropriate referral.

Working with ENTs

Southend also gets referrals through their ENT colleagues. If the ENTs see a patient who needs amplification or hearing therapy support, they refer them over to Southend. These patients can come directly to the hospital audiology department from the ENT.

Southend works collaboratively with ENTs, who can also view audiograms. Southend has the Auditbase viewer set up, and the ENTs all have accounts so they can view the audiogram on the same day that Southend does them, which is very efficient.

The ENTs don’t need to approve the audiograms for amplification. According to Ellis, the ENTs won't say "Oh, you have to have this." They will offer it as a suggestion, and then Southend does the rehabilitation. Southend’s audiologists interview the patient about their expectations, then ask if they’d like to proceed with hearing aids, if the patient decides they want to move forward, Southend’s team does the appropriate next steps for a fitting.

Smooth patient journey with advanced scheduling

Southend Hospital has clinics where patients come in for their history and hearing test, and if it shows that they would benefit from a hearing aid, and if it's something they want to try, then the audiologists will try and fit them on the same day.

”We often have allocated audiologists for the assessment part, and then we have audiologists ready and waiting to fit patients. Patients will often leave with new hearing aids, and they're just amazed that it's all been done in one day,” Ellis explained.

They rely very heavily on Auditbase for scheduling all of this.

"The Auditbase scheduler is brilliant. I think we've got a good set-up now where our admin team will make appointments available, usually around four to six weeks in advance. Then, we've got a well-monitored waiting list and as soon as more appointments become available in the scheduling, they work through and get them booked. It’s perfect."

Kirsten Ellis

Senior Audiologist, Southend Hospital

1/3

The HL7 information for our site, in particular, pulls through patient demographics and important information alerts into AuditBase and was purchased specifically around the accessible information standard to allow PAS warnings to be pulled through.

We have a good PAS link system, as well. When patients get booked in on the main hospital system, which is Medway, it feeds into our Auditbase directly. So, we don't then have to manually input that information. We've got the HL7 link that pops them in automatically, which is handy.

PAS-link is an Auditbase interface to the client hospital’s Patient Administrative System. It’s used to keep the patients’ demographic data updated, like name, address, date of birth, date of death, etc.
HL7=HealthLevel7 is an interface standard for the exchange of health data between IT systems. It’s usually used as an add-on to the PAS-link so that the hospitals can integrate patients’ appointments, referrals, and clinical data from Audtibase, such as submission of audiograms, journal information, and other measurement results.

Hearing assessments on Primus

Ellis said that Southend performs ”absolutely loads” of hearing assessments on Primus each year.

”Everything is on the screen and it makes it so easy. If you're doing a REM, for example, everything's just there. It's just easy to click through it, it just makes sense. It's there, it's clear, you can choose which views you want, which views you don't want. It's good to review past data, including past measurements,” Ellis explained. ”If we're using Primus, you can go from doing the video otoscopy, straight to PTA, then straight to REM. It's all there on one screen. So, for convenience, it's absolutely wonderful.”

Ellis said Primus saves their audiologists time and hassle because it’s all connected. She said they don’t need to switch between different screens or different pieces of software. ”Primus is a lot quicker since you’re not putting the PC through too much by swapping screens and closing certain things and reopening things and trying to feed bits of data from one thing to another.”

The benefits of combining Primus and Auditbase

It’s beneficial to combine Primus to the Auditbase, Ellis explained. They use the small panel, which she said is really quick. She said that the control panel pops up on the screen, especially since their upgrade, and it’s lovely.

According to Ellis, there are three huge benefits of Primus Auditbase compared to other systems.

Use Primus and Auditbase together

The first is the communication with the Auditdata team. She said Auditdata’s support is great. If they don't understand something, something's not going quite right, or something completely unexpected happens, it’s nice knowing that the Auditdata support team is there and quite easily contactable. Ellis said that she’s never experienced this kind of efficiency before, when working with other providers.

The second big benefit is the system’s integration, which makes everything so easy and quick.

"It's easy to problem find if something goes wrong, which is what I tend to do in my role quite a lot. If something goes wrong, someone calls me and it's usually a lead that's been unplugged or something like that, but it's easy to troubleshoot. That goes back to my first point, if I can't troubleshoot very well, then I know who to talk to at Auditdata, "

Kirsten Ellis

Southend Hospital

1/3

A third major benefit is the calibration SWAP service. It's especially helpful because they are such a big site with a lot of equipment. If they have headphones that are intermittent or something goes wrong, it’s reassuring to know that they have something that is pre-calibrated and ready to go for a quick swap out and activation, with no downtime or disruption to service. They have that assurance that they are swapping it out with something that will work and has been checked appropriately.