Health and social care software specialists Liquidlogic have announced that their ‘Protocol’ integrated children’s system has been successfully deployed by Cumbria County Council.
The council had previously been working on a paper-based system which was outdated and did not comply with the Department for Education and Skills’ (DfES) Every Child Matters agenda, which says local authorities must have an IT-based solution that supports practice and case record keeping from case referral to case closure.
Cumbria’s senior project manager in the Children’s services department, Jo Fox, told E-Health Insider Primary Care: “Our old system couldn’t deliver the specification for the DfES Every Child Matters agenda, and so to meet the target to have an IT system in place by the end of this month, we went out to tender to implement such a system. We also felt that the timing was right following an inspection which concluded that our methods of recording information was not robust enough.”
The council provides care to around 498,900 people in the region over six districts and so it was important that the chosen software could provide full electronic visibility and control into its care planning and case management across the district with minimum disruption to its 650 care practitioners.
Fox told EHIPC: “Cumbria is a huge county and is sparsely populates, so children can be placed anywhere within a five mile radius from where they were based before. This meant that we had to make calls around the county and send a large paper file with anyone who was traveling to ensure the practitioner had the right case notes for their visits.
He said that using the new Liquidlogic child care system, practitioners can make just one phone call and electronically send the record to the designated team manager for an area, making the whole process faster and more secure. "It means that if a team manager is away and work needs to be allocated, we can do this using the electronic system and practitioners aren’t kept waiting to find out their schedule for the day,” said Fox.
Liquidlogic began deployment of the system in April, and spread the deployments between each of the six districts. The integrated care system went live across all six districts at the end of December last year.
Using an integration platform, data from the council’s existing CareFirst database onto the new system. Fox says this has made case turnarounds much faster.
“Prior to going live, we were working at around 40% turnaround rate for individual cases, but now with the new system, that has gone up to an 80% rate. This is largely to do with the fact that practitioners now have all details populated together, and the use of referral and assessment forms enables much more efficient case management.”
Cumbria went through a detailed business process mapping exercise, system testing and staff consultation, to ensure that the electronic system mirrored its previous manual case management process.
Fox said: “Ensuring that the electronic case management system worked in the same way as the manual process was critical to ensuring minimum disruption to care practitioners. To make the transition to electronic case management was as painless as possible, it was essential that the system was intuitive and simple to use, supporting practice and case record keeping from case referral to case closure.
“Liquidlogic’s system is easy to navigate. By utilising process maps, it enables users to quickly find the right element of the case management process if they get lost. It’s as easy as shopping on Amazon.”
The new system was initially greeted with skepticism from care practitioners, but comprehensive training and increased efficiency through the streamlined process has helped to provide Cumbria with a systematic approach to deal with the lives of vulnerable children and their families.
Fox said: “There were several initial fears, ranging from the fact that some practitioners couldn’t type and were concerned that case information would get lost in the system, to an overall concern that the electronic system would take care-workers away from working with families. These concerns were addressed through six-week training programmes in each region, which included IT workshops and change management agents helping to dispel these fears
One of the surprising benefits of the system has been to help practitioners to better order their thoughts. "The ability to loop information through the care assessment and case notes has enabled practitioners to get a clear view of what new information means for the care of the child," explained Fox.
Another early benefit of the roll-out of electronic case management system has been reductions in the time taken to complete initial assessments and care plans.
Links
Liquidlogic – www.liquidlogic.co.uk
Cumbria County Council – www.cumbria.gov.uk