University Hospitals Dorset (UHD) Dorset Care Record project support officer Sam Belhomme charts the acute hospital’s progress so far and highlights how a communications strategy to drive up user numbers is paying dividends.
We have spent the last couple of years implementing a number of different components into the Dorset Care Record (DCR): Demographics, Emergency Department encounters, Inpatient admissions, Outpatient attendances, WLM bookings, Radiology reports, Allergies, Clinic Letters, ED Discharge Summaries, Inpatient Discharge Summaries and Single Sign on for staff (phew).
But there is still work to be done. My manager Grant Thompson and I are currently working on putting our Business As Usual processes in place as well as looking at what additional documentation we can start sending into DCR. We are also starting to look at the new Citizen Portal called myDCR and how it can be utilised by patients and staff to enhance care.
Last but by no means least, we are working at UHD to increase our current user base and promote DCR both within the stand alone DCR portal and also via the Graphnet EPR single sign on functionality.
Increasing our current users within UHD will be self-serving – the more people who use and benefit from DCR, the more they will tell their colleagues about it. In turn, this will generate more interest and lead to more users. We have seen a step increase recently in the positive feedback received about DCR and some great case studies have come out of those conversations. Case Studies – Dorset Care Record (dorsetcouncil.gov.uk)
We asked some of the top DCR users from the Orion Health monthly statistical report if they knew of any areas they thought would benefit from using DCR, and made sure we included any areas recommended to further increase our user base. A glowing recommendation from a colleague is an excellent way to get interest from staff and we have had DCR users emailing colleagues to tell them what they can see in DCR and how it will be of use.
We have allocated over 1400 new DCR accounts in the last couple of weeks and these accounts are now in the process of getting DCR access via the Graphnet EPR Single Sign On. With this access a user can open DCR in patient context whilst in Graphnet EPR so there is no need to log in separately. It’s a great tool and we hope that by automatically setting up this access rather than waiting for people to ask for it, users will see the benefits of DCR and we will see an increase in records accessed.
As well as this “blanket” access we are also communicating with a large number of clinical directorates across the Trust to verbally promote DCR and offer Teams demos or Q&A sessions to their departments. So far it’s gone down well with 5 demos booked in and more areas showing an interest. We are always happy to pick up the phone to have an informal chat or answer questions and we even have done a couple of one to one sessions on Teams because we can’t properly face to face at the moment.
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