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Supporting Clinical Decision Making

This project will ensure we make the best use of technology and modern ways of working to support clinical decision making. This includes reviewing how we provide things like medicines - when and where patients need them, how we order blood tests and get the results, the best ways for people to contact us and us them. 

Electronic Ordering of Tests and Results 

Good physical health is an essential component of wellbeing and an essential part of the delivery of care in mental health services. This workstream has been established to introduce a new system to assist clinicians in organising and monitoring physical care checks. Although this new system will initially be used to support physical health care there is an intention to expand its usage over the next four years to incorporate all aspects of care management.

New Clinical Care Pathways 

This workstream will identify ten common integrated care pathways that are currently in development or an identified need. A full time post has been funded for 12 months to support the development and implementation of the care pathways.

What is a Care Pathway? Care pathways are more than protocols, flow charts, process maps or guidelines. Each key pathway stage is expanded to provide clinicians with the detailed understanding of required interventions. These are research and evidence based and will allow for the best placed people to be doing the right things, in the right order, at the right time to an accepted level of quality.

Click to download an example of a care pathway. Evaluation processes are built into pathways when they are developed to enable audit for compliance and variance. 

Currently, a survey is taking place of all trust protocols, flow charts, process maps or guidelines. A workshop is going to be held involving a multi-disciplinary group of senior clinicians and other stakeholders to review this information to determine the ten care pathways that the project post holder will develop. If anyone is interested in being involved in the project please contact Christine Gornall on 01772 695365 or email christine.gornall@lancashirecare.nhs.uk 

Office Systems 

Everyday NHS staff use systems as part of normal working routine, whether planning a meeting, printing clinical letters, or managing staff diaries, some form of technology or application is usually involved. However, there are times when the introduction of new technologies does not always bring any noticeable benefit to the end user, generating a feeling of frustration that these systems are not helping us to work smarter.

The Office Systems workstream aims to address this issue, by working with staff in pilot sites to determine how the everyday applications that we use are applied to both patient and staff administration tasks. The project will look at how these technologies can be used to improve the way we work, whilst identifying methods of working that can be implemented across the rest of the trust.

Ultimately the aim is to simplify, and improve the day to day office functions by getting the best out of IT systems, whilst minimising the burden on front line staff, all within a structured framework.

24 Hour Helpline 

How can we make it easier for people to access our services? We live in a 24-hour society and expect to be able to access services as and when we need them. The Helpline workstream has been established to explore how telephone technology and call-centre services could be used to improve access to our services through the Internet and over the telephone.

This work stream is about supporting service users to have easy 24 hour access to services using a dedicated number and call centre technology. Currently the trust has separate phone numbers for every team with diversions to mobile phones being a common feature. 

Calls would be triaged and action could range from CBT advice to immediate contact with crisis services. It is envisaged that call operators would have access to relapse plans for long term service users. Calls would need to be quality controlled to monitor response times. This service will improve access thereby improving safety. Key executives, service users and carers will establish what would need to feature in such a service.