Tackling issues such as information sharing and sensitive patients by bringing together an agreed common approach among Dorset Care Record partners has been one of the year’s highlights for programme manager Elizabeth McEleney.
Elizabeth feels that this clear approach has helped overcome obstacles and helped build a strong foundation and greater confidence to help deliver a range of additional functionality for the DCR.
The past year has seen an ongoing enrichment of the DCR, with radiology and pathology reports, referrals, allergies, ED encounters and the maternity clinical pathway coming on stream over the past 12 months.
There are still pressing complex issues ahead, such as the inclusion of discharge medicines into the DCR, but huge progress has been made in this area, and once available it will be particularly useful for all clinicians and practitioners, and contribute to ‘one medication record’ across all settings.
Other challenges have included the introduction of pathways into the DCR. Two were originally chosen- maternity and cancer follow-up – with a view of ensuring we build a system that is fit for all future pathways.
There has been success with the clinical maternity pathway from the practitioner’s perspective, which is linking well with Dorset CCG’s Better Births/Maternity Matters initiative. In the future we hope to focus on pathways designed from the practitioners perspective such as diabetes and COPD.
“The maternity pathway has been the first time we’ve got a single set of agreed documents across Dorset actually being used by a range of practitioners (health visitors, midwives) and visible to other professionals, and this will support the work for the pan-Dorset maternity system.
“We want to be able to use their learning and implement these pathways across Dorset to help us to grow further.”
Elizabeth expects to see the number of people using the DCR rise considerably next year with the advent of Single Sign On from the three acute hospitals (Royal Bournemouth and Christchurch, Poole and Dorset County) and the two local authorities (Bournemouth Christchurch and Poole and Dorset Council). The Project Management Office and Orion Health are also working to enable GPs to have SSO from their clinical systems.
As well as implementing discharge medicines from the three acute hospitals and pathology from Bournemouth and Poole acute hospitals, next year will see demographics from the local authorities and Dorset HealthCare and the introduction of mental health records through the RIO system further enriching the DCR.
So what are Elizabeth’s hopes for this time next year? “I’d like to see the DCR system widely adopted and used right across Dorset from a practitioner perspective, and information available to support the citizen. I feel confident that the adoption of SSO and further enrichment of the available data will help us achieve this.”