Finding information swiftly through the Dorset Care Record is helping a Dorset HealthCare worker, as it provides vital, accurate information about patient care and saves time for busy health professionals, GP’s and acute hospital staff.
Cathy Hopkins has been working at the Mid-Dorset hub in Dorchester for the past two years as a health and social care coordinator after 5 years working in human resources at the then Royal Bournemouth and Christchurch Hospitals.
She works alongside a range of NHS staff – physiotherapists, occupational therapists, rehabilitation assistants, nurses, advanced practitioners and community matrons – and Dorset Council staff in the integrated hub. Working closely with adult social care staff at the local authority, she also liaises with GP’s, Dorset County Hospital , Weldmar Hospice and members of the public. The Hub holds virtual wards twice weekly for discussing the most vulnerable frailty patients, so having the most up to date information is vital to our role as coordinators.
Part of her role is coordinating care and appropriate therapy support for patients discharged from Dorset County Hospital to ensure they receive the best follow-up treatment, whether this is at home or at a community hospital. This brings her into contact with occupational therapists, rehab specialists, physiotherapists and nurses as well as staff from GP practices and social care teams from Dorset Council.
Mid-Dorset Hub
The Hub provides frailty care for people who are over 65: “We receive rapid responses and referrals from Dorset County Hospital, GP’s, concerned family members, mental health teams and social care, One part of our role is to register referred patients to have appropriate assessments for example for falls and mobility to see if they need equipment to help them at home to mobilise safely, for example, to get out of bed safely.
“The Hub also sources community beds for patients when needed urgently. We also attend Multidisciplinary Team meetings (MDTs) and work with the Mid Dorset GP practices in Dorchester, the Poundbury practices, three rural practices, covering Puddletown, Milton Abbas and Cerne Abbas and Portesham. The Mid Dorset Hub’s therapists and rehab cover a wide area, spanning from Portesham over to the border with the Blandford Hub, often dealing with 25-50 patients a week .”
Cathy has access to a number of different IT systems to help her find patient information, including the Patient Administration System(PAS) at DCH, Mosaic at Dorset Council and the DCR, which she has been using for the past two years as well as NHS systems and GP practice systems.
“We have sometimes found that trying to source the most current information has been slower than we would like. Information from the acute hospitals regarding test results and appointments booked has not really been available unless we are phoning round the hospital which of course takes up a lot of time and resources.
Benefits of using DCR
“But the additional feeds coming into the DCR in recent months have made a real positive difference, particularly as we can now see blood test results and radiology results so easily. This extra information gives us a more informed picture of what is currently happening with the patients and this can be relayed to the team. This helps us not only in the Hub but also in MDT`s to discuss the best way of helping the patients with other services that we and other professionals provide. Making care more appropriate and individualised which of course benefits the patients.”
She says there is quite a lot of interest among colleagues at Dorset Council and she is urging them to join the DCR: “I think it’s really worth exploring and worth spending a bit of time to find out how much is now available. There is so much more information than this time last year, including community physical health data, which I think adult social care staff would find really beneficial for casework.”
- The Dorset Care Record currently contains demographics, encounters, radiology, allergy information and clinical correspondence from our major hospitals (University Hospitals Dorset and Dorset County Hospital) as well as pathology records, referrals and discharge medications from DCH. GP records, community physical health data from Dorset HealthCare and demographic information from our two local authorities, Dorset Council and Bournemouth Christchurch and Poole is also available.
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