02 April 2008
SystmOne Deployed to One of the Largest Practices in the Country
Newgate Medical Group in Worksop, Bassetlaw PCT, recently migrated almost 34,000 patients to SystmOne. They are the second largest practice in the country and went live on SystmOne GP on February 1st 2008.
Practice staff first heard about SystmOne through word of mouth from another GP after complaining about the slowness of their legacy system. General Manager, Sheila Smith, and Data Quality Manager, Sally Spencer, went to visit a nearby practice already using SystmOne and were impressed. Sally says, "When we'd seen SystmOne, we realised that we were a couple of years behind. There are so many things that SystmOne could do that we hadn't even considered such as being able to right-click and add things in bulk or send letters to a list of patients. You couldn't do anything like that in the system we were using."
Sheila Smith, General Manager at Newgate, says, "When we saw the demonstration of SystmOne, we thought it looked good. We liked the ease of navigation and the reporting. We were impressed that searches are there at a push of a button, where previously, it took us a little while to find the information we needed. We hope that moving onto SystmOne will speed us up as a practice."
Karen Mellors was the NHS Project Manager responsible for coordinating the data migration, business change and training. She describes how a business change review was conducted to discuss all functions within the practice: "We looked at all the sections of the practice, looking at, for example, how they booked appointments or prescribed drugs on the old system. Then we had at look at how they could do it on SystmOne and produced a Business Change Approach document. All the training referred back to that document."
On Go Live day, extra support was needed for the large practice as Karen explains: "The practice has four reception desks, so we needed to provide training support for each reception desk and also used these areas as main points of contact to make it easier for all other staff that required help and support to have access to a trainer."
Undergoing a big change like moving to a new IT system can often lead to changes in other areas of working. "We're thinking about updating how we work in other areas, and are currently thinking about using SystmOne for scanning," says Sheila. "The paper files are getting large now, and we'd like to move towards being paper-light."
Moving to a new IT system is a daunting prospect for any practice, let alone one with a large team like Newgate, with 17 doctors and 50 other staff members, but Sheila says that there have been no problems: "It's been good, we haven't experienced any problems and it's been organised very well. The contact we've had with TPP and CSC has been good, and the training that the team has had so far from the Health Informatics Service trainers has been very good."
Sally says the practice staff are pleased with SystmOne, "The clinicians are finding it easier to input data, for example, entering values in a template. There are lots of little benefits to SystmOne that make it so much quicker than our old system, like being able to add recalls, create letters and print information from a right-click. The whole process has been worthwhile and as we get used to the system, I'm sure it'll get even easier."
TPP Project Manager, Kirsty Lindsay, says, "Newgate has the largest capitation we've dealt with and is the second largest practice in the country, but the process for us is the same as with any other practice. The deployment has gone well and we are pleased that the practice is now live."
SystmOne is already being used by GP, Child Health and some Community services in Bassetlaw PCT, and two other practices are currently in deployment. Now, nearly 60% of patients in the PCT have a SystmOne record. As more services go live in Bassetlaw, healthcare teams will have the opportunity to maximise use of SystmOne as both a clinical and a communication tool, improving patient care.
This article is an excerpt from a case study. Look out for the full version on the our Case Studies page soon.
