| “Delivering a multi-agency partnership with shared client data is a vital initiative for us to help our communities” – Fiona Dixon, North Somerset Commissioner |
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North Somerset: A focus on collaborative working and a joined-up approach to managing patient care
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North Somerset is a unitary district within Somerset, South West England. Recently the council have been working hard to set out their vision to help improve resident’s health and wellbeing and reduce the health inequalities across North Somerset over the next few years. |
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North Somerset is a large area with a mixture of urban and rural locations. Like many regions of a similar demographic, it faces challenges around deprivation and substance misuse – 10% of the population of North Somerset live in the 20% most deprived areas of England. Across North Somerset, there are currently over 900 people receiving support for their substance misuse, with around 400 being prescribed opiate substitute medications (e.g. Methadone, Buprenorphine etc.)
Where patients present at other services for additional support – GP Practices, Mental Health services, homelessness centres, A&E etc. – a lack of transparency around patient information can act as a significant barrier to providing high quality, continuity of care. This presents a huge challenge to services that support some of the most vulnerable people in the UK.
To address these challenges, North Somerset’s commissioner – Fiona Dixon – worked with Connecting Care to improve the sharing of vital patient information. Fiona hopes that through collaborative working between GP practices, drug/alcohol treatment services as well as other healthcare providers, North Somerset can achieve their goals around health and wellbeing by focusing on the whole treatment journey of all clients to prevent patients ‘falling through the gaps’.
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Initiative: Connecting Care
| “Connecting Care helps allow instant access to client’s records in one click. Overcoming the challenges of wasting time researching client data and helping reduce delay to administering treatment”. – Dr Mike Taylor |
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As a leading supplier of case management tools within the substance misuse sector, ILLY Systems integrated the LINKS CarePath system into the Connecting Care System.
Connecting Care is a digital care record system for sharing patient information across multiple teams across multiple districts. The record contains information held at GP practices, treatment providers, hospital departments, community services, mental health trusts, out-of-hours services and other local authorities across Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire. All of the combined information gives a single shared digital record of a client which can be accessed by authorised healthcare practitioners.
Innovation: Multi-Agency Partnership working using innovative Technology
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As part of a wider ‘South West England Interoperability Initiative’ of connecting the areas of Bristol, South Gloucestershire and North Somerset, ILLY worked with Connecting Care to integrate the data from the Substance Misuse services.
To see how this was accomplished within fixed budgets and timeframes, please see above a short video presentation about the initiative and what the future holds.
- Fran Draper (NHS Project manager)
- Dr Mike Taylor (Lead GP for the Bristol Homeless Health Service)
- Fiona Dixon (North Somerset Commissioner Fiona Dixon)
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Would you like to find out more?
It is through collaborative working, and the sharing of data and information, that we can help build an approach that can improve our communities and evolve the way we work with vulnerable clients.
If you have any questions or would like to find out more, please get in touch with our Client Services Team and we’ll be happy to help:
+44 (0)20 4566 5727 clientservices@illycorp.com
