During the Covid pandemic many staff were redeployed into the Single Point of Access (SPA) team – the Transfer of Care Hub for Dorset. They have been involved in transferring patients from one setting to another to ensure consistent continuity of care.
The SPA is a remote service, which operates 7 days a week from 8am until 6pm. Its remit is to work with partners across the Integrated Care System, including our acute hospitals and social services. It uses the Discharge to Assess pathways to support hospital discharges, thereby increasing patient flow.
The team predominantly use the Dorset Care Record (DCR) because they are looking to bring patients in and put them on the relevant pathway to their care needs. This depends on where they go – either home or interim rehabilitation, permanent nursing or residential home, depending on the care assistance needs that are required.
In this instance, DCR is mainly used by the SPA Health & Social Care Coordinators and the SPA Non-Clinical Lead. SPA Dorset HealthCare administrator Claire Lochhead said: “They also link in with the Dorset Hubs – split across 5 clusters to help ensure the patient journey of care is tracked following acute or community hospital discharge.
“Clusters are where GPs sit and lots of caseloads for SPA are based on where their cluster is. Clusters have also recently been given access to DCR.
“At the beginning of a SPA referral the team look at the primary care Immunisation record. They also use pathology, in particular, seratology, for Covid 19 results. At the end of their referral they are looking at the history snapshot – admission and discharge dates from all partners.
“The DCR provides real time info. Discharges do not always come through to the patient record until the following day,” said Claire.
The team sometimes has patients with Hampshire GPs so the patient record is not always available. “This is something would benefit the team greatly to see Hampshire records too,” she added.
The DCR is currently working with Ringwood and Coastal GP practices in Hampshire to ensure they have access to our shared care record. In the longer-term, the Wessex Care Records are looking to improve interoperability to join up the DCR and Hampshire Care and Health Information Exchange (CHIE) systems.
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