Tower Hamlets Primary Care Trust has deployed a new
electronic single assessment process to allow GPs, social services,
hospitals and mental health services to better co-ordinate their
care of older people.
The new system, implemented by BT, is based on Case Notes, from
software company CSW, and gives health and social care
professionals a single, comprehensive source of information about a
patient. This helps provide care workers with an accurate
assessment of current needs and existing care provision and allows
a more speedy response to new patient problems, the company
says.
The Single Assessment Process (SAP), introduced in the
Department of Health’s National Service Framework (NSF) for older
people, aims to make sure care needs are assessed thoroughly and
accurately, but without procedures being needlessly duplicated by
different agencies.
The new e-SAP system is shared by 227 users from Tower Hamlets
PCT, Tower Hamlets Social Services, Barts and The London NHS Trust
and East London and The City Mental Health Trust. The process
promotes a multi-disciplinary care team approach, spanning all
those Health and Social Care organisations providing care input to
its clients.
Once a user logs in to the e-SAP system, he or she is assigned a
job ‘role’ based on their chosen access point. Role-based access
then restricts their view of that record to display only that which
is relevant to their role. The e-SAP system is also integrated with
the NHS Care Record Service and meets the required Connecting for
Health (CfH) compliance standards for connection.
Polly Wicks, Tower Hamlets Social Services SAP Project Manager
said, “We are getting very positive responses from staff across the
borough.”