SystmOne users hit back at negative OOH media stories
Media coverage about Out of Hours care in Britain tends to make grim reading, giving the impression that all centres are failing and that Out of Hours care is universally unsatisfactory. At the end of October, 'Pulse' magazine reported on a 'Crisis of confidence in out-of-hours care', stating that both GPs' and patients' confidence in the service is 'plunging'.
Clearly, there are problems in some PCTs, but for services using SystmOne, it's a very different story.
TPP's focus on developing SystmOne Out of Hours has been to provide a system that can improve the quality and standard of clinical outcomes. Bradford & Airedale GP Emergency Centre and North East Lincolnshire Out of Hours based in Grimsby have been using SystmOne Out of Hours for the last three years to provide a joined-up care service linking GP and OOH.
John Collard, Matron for Unscheduled Care and Nurse Practitioner for Bradford and Airedale tPCT, says, "Media reports about the lack of communication in OOH make me cross. Those issues don't apply to us because at Bradford & Airedale we've got excellent systems in place - we're years ahead of our time."
John explains how the technology systems used at Bradford & Airedale GP Emergency Centre work together. "When a patient contacts the Out of Hours call handling service, their details are recorded on Adastra. That information is passed through to the OOH unit so that we see basic demographic information, a one-line comment about the complaint and details of the patient's consent to look at their record. If permitted, we then access the patient record on SystmOne and phone the patient back."
Consent to access a patient's record is always sought and rarely refused. In Bradford, John says, "In the last three years, we've only had two people say they didn't want us to access the record. When we do access a record, we must first record the consent on the system, and then there is a full audit trail, and a notification is automatically sent to the patient's GP."
Ruth Thompson, Clinical Implementation Manager at North East Lincolnshire OOH, says reactions from patients at the Grimsby centre are very positive, "Very rarely does a patient not give consent to view their record. When they do consent, they're often pleasantly surprised by the information available. For example, you can give them blood test results before the GP does, which saves them a trip back to the practice."
Having access to a patient's record in OOH makes a big difference to patient care. "You can see the patient's medical history, when they last saw the GP and what that was about," says John. "This is a huge advantage. It enables you in many cases, particularly for people with complex health problems, to focus your questions around previous problems, and to see what their problems are likely to be."
In North East Lincolnshire, the majority of GPs use SystmOne, which means most GP records are available at the OOH unit. Ruth says, "If the patient usually attends a SystmOne GP practice, we can see their records in OOH. We tend to treat patients from across Lincolnshire and Yorkshire and can see the majority of records. I wish everybody was on SystmOne. It would make life much easier!"
John says, "There's no doubt that treating a patient without a SystmOne record makes you much more wary. You have no access to their background information, past medication or allergies. And then you realise that this is how units are working elsewhere in the country - pretty much in the dark. We're so used to having access to the record, when you see someone without a SystmOne record, you do feel more cautious."
SystmOne is constantly being developed. Recent additions to the OOH system have included the ability to record information in line with national quality requirements. Ruth says, "Now, we have full capabilities to report on our data on SystmOne and have been able to report full compliance."
John concludes: "SystmOne enables us to extend the GP service into the Out of Hours period, rather than provide a 'plug-the-gap' service. With SystmOne, we can offer a decent GP service out of hours, which is what it's all about."
SystmOne Out of Hours is part of the core offering provided by CSC Computer Sciences under the National Programme for IT, and is therefore available with funding from the Connecting for Health project in the North, East and Midlands regions of England.
Coming soon… An Out of Hours case study on our 'Case Studies' page, including more information about Bradford & Airedale and NE Lincolnshire, as well as other Out of Hours services using SystmOne.
