Sutton and Merton Community Services (SMCS) is a Directly Provided Organisation (DPO) and will be hosted from 2011 by the Royal Marsden Hospital. The community service provides healthcare services to some 400,000 people it serves in South London.
As part of the NHS London Programme for IT, Sutton and Merton Community Services (SMCS) adopted the RiO community health electronic records system for its patient care records. The trust went live with RiO version 4 in 2006, implemented and supported by BT the local service provider (LSP) for London.
Since then, RiO has provided a platform for change that is delivering valuable benefits to both staff and patients. Already being used by thousands of people across the NHS, RiO Community Health provides an electronic version of each patient’s care record. Instead of clinical notes being filed as a paper record, it gives healthcare professionals the information they need where they need it – and when they need it – helping to provide more joined up, safer care.
But RiO is much more than just an electronic records system and encompasses a broad range of clinical and administrative functions to help trusts. Some of the improvements seen by trusts have been realised as a direct result of the RiO implementation. Other benefits, though, have been secured because RiO provides a platform that allows trusts to develop their own services based on their needs. Far from being a one-size-fits-all solution, RiO has the flexibility to enable healthcare organisations to redesign their services underpinned by a platform that is robust enough to support such innovation.
For instance, SMCS recognised that it could exploit RiO to support a new service delivery model that would help make the organisation more streamlined and efficient, which, in turn would benefit patient care.
In April 2009 SMCS launched the first phase of its Virtual Community Hospital (VCH) which aims to provide an integrated care model to improve care and productivity. As part of VCH, SMCS launched its Single Point of Referral (SPR) which plays a critical role in the overall success of VCH.
Today, SPR is the only point of entry for adult domiciliary referrals enabling the trust to track referrals from entry to discharge. It provides vital information that allows staff to know precisely where the patient is at any stage, enabling information to be captured and shared via an electronic case record in the RiO system.
“As part of our ‘Virtual Community Hospital’ we wished to make the entry point to our services as streamlined and simple as possible,” said Sandy Keen, assistant director Strategy & Service Development SMCS. “We have no buildings or beds, but believed that we could use traditional triage and admission processes, care planning, multi-disciplinary team working, virtual ward rounds and planned discharges to manage patient care in a better way. The whole process works just like a virtual hospital with the whole process underpinned by RiO.”
Indeed, RiO supports the entire patient journey – from admission to care delivery and discharge – providing the only single route for new referrals into adult domiciliary services.
“Streamlined and standardised, the SPR is the critical path to admit patients into VCH,” said Sandy. “It prioritises patients and supports the clinicians to manage the caseload. Once the patient is admitted, assessment and care plans are drawn up and progress notes inputted on RiO. This can then be used for sharing within teams for review, patient transfer and discharge purposes – as well as to other services within the VCH.”
The RiO-supported transformation has proved such a success, SPR is now well established in nine adult domiciliary services with potential plans for further roll-out into outpatient services, including podiatry, physiotherapy and family planning services.
