Background
Worcestershire Health and Care NHS Trust made a decision to rationalise its Electronic Patient Record (EPR) systems and, for the majority of services, the aim was to have one system where all information relevant to a person’s health and care could be accessed. Through a tendering process Carenotes was awarded the contract to take this forward.The Trust used CODE as its main system to record information relating to CYP IAPT, including data collected through outcome measurement. Carenotes provided a way for the Trust to record all the information from CODE and the main Patient Administration System (NHS Care Records Status) in one place, bringing together outcome data with information on CAMHS demographic and patient activity.
What was the problem?
Carenotes has capacity to record some core outcome measures in its system, but not enough required for routine outcome measurement. Further questionnaires needed to be built into the system, along with testing into how this information could be populated and reported out through the back end operation of the system.
Who was involved?
CAMHS services, including CYP IAPT leads within the Trust, alongside the Trust Configuration Team. The Trust Performance and Information Team were also involved.
What was the result?
By using Carenotes all the information relating to CAMHS and CYP IAPT is in one place. Previously, routine outcome measurements were manually filled out and entered into CODE. Additional patient details had to be re-entered, even though demographic information had already been captured on the main Patient Administration System (PAS). There is still an element of manual data input taking place, in the future we would like outcome measure data to be captured in a more direct way through patients’ using mobile technology.
What did we learn?
- Don’t underestimate the time needed to work through and test what is required
- Process map how the information will be entered into the system from start to finish
- Closely work with information teams to agree how the data can be entered to fulfil requirements for reporting out from the back end of the system
Next steps
We are still working on the reporting of outcomes data from the system, as Carenotes cannot automatically do this. The Trust Information Team and the Trust Data Warehouse Team are looking at building reports that take information from the outcome measures put into the system and automating this into a graphical format.