Sandwell Mental Health and Social Care NHS Foundation Trust and Oasis Medical Solutions have announced that they will market their jointly developed electronic patient record to the mental health market.
The trust, which has been using an Oasis patient administration system since 2005, has been working with the company to tailor the EPR to the mental health environment.
The EPR allows users to view the entire patient pathway and includes patient administration functionality, care plans, e-prescribing, letters and referrals, bed management, integration with A&E, equipment tracking and N3 compliance.
The trust has configured the system for the use of more than 600 clinicians in four specialist areas, including learning disabilities and child and adolescent mental health services.
Jayne Chambers, a consultant at the trust, said: “Developing the system together means that we are in a position where we can tailor the product to specific areas but at the same time we don’t have a huge dependency on the provider.
“This is particularly important because the operating framework requires you to do make changes on a regular basis. With the partnership, with we can constantly tweak the system.”
The trust said that it has used the system to improve communications with patients. “A lot of work that we’ve done is around the patient only needing to tell us their story once – which is particularly important in mental health.
"Crisis information is also readily available. So the A&E system will give us information such as not to call a patient’s brother, as this may trigger an episode, rather than us having to ask the patient."
The system will be sold by both Sandwell and Oasis. The trust offers configuration and set-up as a hosted service and will also offer consultancy to other trusts.
Sharon Boyes-Schiller, managing director at Oasis, said: “Oasis has always encouraged the users of its mental health and acute systems to collaborate actively and constructively in the configuration of their systems – to tailor them to their own specific requirements.
“Sandwell’s clinicians and managers used the clinical and administrative toolkits which underpin the Oasis mental health platform and they succeeded in delivering a fully integrated EPR which helps to manage every aspect of supporting mental health care within the NHS.
“Critically the Sandwell Oasis system incorporates the use of HONoS assessment and care clusters, with pathways, in readiness for payment by results for mental health."
She added that she hoped five to six trusts would implement over the next 18 months.
Links: Oasis