Westcliffe Medical Practice GPwSIs use SystmOne

Westcliffe Medical Practice, Bradford and Airedale tPCT, is a large GP practice running many enhanced services not only for their own patients but also for those from the wider district. Services include GPs with Special Interests (GPwSI) clinics as well as diagnostic and secondary care outpatient clinics, all of which are available through the Choose and Book system. As General Practice is evolving to include more and more of this type of working, TPP took the opportunity to work with Westcliffe to develop SystmOne to fully support their enhanced services.

The team at Westcliffe Medical Practice

Julie Winterbottom is Westcliffe's Business Manager. She explains why a change from their legacy system was needed in the first place: "Firstly, we wanted to be able to speed up the communication between clinicians and help clinicians at both sides make more informed decisions about patient care. Secondly, we wanted to achieve efficiencies such as cutting down on the number of letters written. If you can communicate in real time through the clinical system, you reduce bureaucracy, paper and time."

Once the practice had identified SystmOne as the solution that best suited their needs, they met with TPP and their PCT to discuss the developments required. Julie says, "We met so that all parties understood each other's needs and could agree the functionality. TPP then developed SystmOne to the agreed timescale and specification."

Now the development is finished and has been released to SystmOne users, staff at Westcliffe are all getting to grips with it as Julie explains, "Overall, we're settling in to it now and we like the system. SystmOne has vastly reduced the admin time needed to manage enhanced service patients through the process - data is put into the system as a matter of routine, the reports are set to run and then we just submit them to the PCT. It's easy. And there are direct benefits for the patients too - they can go and see or speak to their GP straightaway and the consultation information is already there, they don't need to wait two weeks for a letter to appear."

Julie continues, "We need to provide a Read-coded dataset to the PCT so that we can be paid correctly for our services. The way we do this on SystmOne is much better than the workarounds we had set up on our legacy system as we can now use the full SystmOne reporting suite. The dedicated 'GPwSI Report' is good because you know you're always submitting the correct information to the PCT."

Although developed with Westcliffe, the recent changes to SystmOne will help all practices running enhanced services, as Julie stresses: "The clinical management processes will help all practices providing consultant or GPwSI services. Instead of  inputting the same information into two different systems, everything can  be done on SystmOne."

On SystmOne, when a referral-in is received at Westcliffe, the patient is registered and assigned to a Caseload, and the appointment with the consultant/GPwSI is booked. When the appointment takes place, the clinician uses data entry templates to add information to the patient record. If shared, the full patient record is available to them during the consultation. The consultant/GPwSI then sends a SystmOne 'Task' to the referring GP detailing any action needed and the referring GP can see the consultation in real time, i.e. as soon as it has been saved at Westcliffe.

Julie comments on this process: "It's such a smooth and efficient way of working compared to the old way. Previously, we'd receive a referral letter, then capture all the information in a stand-alone system, and send a referral letter out again. That took a lot of administrative support, not to mention a time delay from the patient's point of view."

Julie concludes: "The way that Westcliffe is working with extended services is directly in line with what the government wants - it's the model of a community-based general practice. The corresponding infrastructure is now in place in SystmOne. No other system can replicate this at the moment."