Over 1.2 million patients in Northumberland, Newcastle upon Tyne, North Tyneside and South Tyneside should benefit from better out of hours medical advice over the phone, after Northern Doctors’ Urgent Care went live with a new TAS Odyssey decision support system from Plain Healthcare.
The system went live at the at the NDUC headquarters call centre in Longbenton, Newcastle on 2 April. TAS Odyssey is Plain Software’s nurse triage clinical decision support system, designed to provide both decision support and identify when a patient needs to access care.
The system uses a ‘rules engine’, and is designed to emulate and support nurse consultation rather than overriding it and has customisable fail-safes, allowing the level of decision support to be tailored by a site to organisational and individual nurses’ needs.
Plain Healthcare’s head of sales, Chris Coyne, told E-Health Insider Primary Care that Northern Doctor’s Urgent Care first wanted the system to help deal with their new responsibilities with out-of-hours dental advice.
“The NDUC service was very GP oriented, and with PCTs having to take over out-of-hours responsibilities for dental care, they realised they had no dental experience to offer patient callers. The great thing about TAS Odyssey is that it covers both GP and dental problems and offers the provider the degree of support they need.”
“In the same way as NHS Direct works, TAS Odyssey offers over 400 evidence based assessment and advice guidelines are regularly reviewed and updated by Plain Software’s international clinical panel,” Coyne said.
He added: “TAS Odyssey will enable nurses to make quick telephone assessments, sorting patients in terms of urgency using the triage system ensuring that patients get the best attention in terms of self-care, or a visit from a community nurse. It enables nurses to make the right decisions necessary to treat patients as best as possible.”
NDUC chief executive, Eric Peacock, said: “The Plain Healthcare system is a safe and reliable service which will enable us to meet our targets and our cost parameters. It was the best option for us and staff have found it very user friendly.”
Coyne said that the latest version of the TAS Odyssey product is now being piloted by SELDOC, the South East London Doctors Co-Operative.
The company is also about to launch a pay-as-you-go service of its Odyssey range, which they hope PCTs who do not use telephone decision support as often will sign up to, paying credits for call times instead.
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