Marie Stopes UK

Marie Stopes UK is an Independent Healthcare Provider and registered charity, offering NHS-funded and private abortion and vasectomy services. More than 95% of abortion clients have their treatments funded by the NHS.

Marie Stopes was the first charity to access Spine services in 2011 with e-referral and operates from multiple sites across the UK with the head office based in London and the call and data centre in Bristol.

Prior to the migration to the Health and Social Care Network (HSCN), Marie Stopes UK was restricted to a single N3 connection at its Bristol site. Following a tender process, Marie Stopes selected BT as its chosen HSCN provider. BT assigned a dedicated migration project manager to liaise with Marie Stopes’ technical engineer and manage the migration activities. Migration was straightforward with no disruption to service users and no prolonged outages. From placing the order to the order being confirmed and a BT project manager being assigned was three weeks. The total timeline from placing the order to completion of migration was four months, with minimal disruption to Marie Stopes UK’s team members.

Marie Stopes UK’s team members can now have access to Spine services across multiple locations and have achieved significant cost savings compared with N3 – in addition to providing connection redundancy.

In addition to the significant cost savings and access to Spine services from main site locations, Marie Stopes UK has also gained significant clinical benefits from migrating to HSCN.

With enhanced access to medical records at all locations, clinicians can access clients’ allergies, medications and previous consultations at the point of care, supporting effective real-time decision making. The treatment options available depend on the client’s gestation, so the speed at which clinicians can access the information, could also be a factor in determining the choice of procedure offered.

With the support of HSCN, Marie Stopes UK is moving towards full integration with Spine services, via a recently procured electronic patient record. Potential options for the future include mobile working opportunities and exploring the possibility of video consultations.