5 Ways that Allied Health Professionals & HSCPs Benefit from a Reliable Electronic Patient Record (EPR) Solution
Health and Social Care Professionals (HSCPs) make up a significant cohort of the Irish Healthcare workforce comprising some 15,000 people or 25% of the total clinical staff working within the HSE. They incorporate a broad group of health professionals – in Ireland there are a total of 26 different clinical professions which come under the HSCP umbrella, and they range across the therapeutic, diagnostic, and social care disciplines.
They also work across all healthcare settings from acute to primary to community and residential care settings as well as care in people’s own homes. The work of HSCPs is varied but includes the diagnosis, evaluation and treatment of acute and chronic diseases, and the promotion of disease prevention and wellness for optimum health. Many HSCP disciplines play an important role in helping patients self-manage various conditions and live independently and so help in preventing over-reliance on hospitals and professional intervention.
Why is Integrated Healthcare and the Coordination of Patient Care Important for Allied Health Professionals?
In recent years across the health service, there has been a focus on the need to address historical service boundaries and promote integration to eliminate healthcare duplication and fragmentation. The HSE recognises this- one of the Sláintecare objectives is to create an integrated system of care where healthcare professionals work closely together. A strategic guidance framework for HSCPs has recently been published which includes a commitment to improve the co-ordination between different HSCP disciplines and thereby increase the capacity of organisations to maintain and improve the delivery of high-quality health and social care.
The NHS in the UK has also instituted a Digital Framework for Allied Health Professionals and one of its ambitions is to provide Digitally mature AHP services which at a minimum means AHPs should be capturing records, assessments and care plans digitally in a format that supports their service, partner services and the patient/service user’s needs.
There is an understanding that multidisciplinary teams can help deliver the optimum level of care for patients whose needs are more complex than what can be managed by one profession alone.
For example, a multidisciplinary team working within a hospital may include practitioners across Speech and Language Therapy, Dietetics, Occupational Therapy and Physiotherapy all working together to deliver the best care possible for the patient.
To work successfully, multidisciplinary teams require complete information that can be communicated and shared easily across the team and they need the information systems to facilitate this. This can be achieved with an electronic patient records (EPR) solution designed and developed to support and augment the care provided by Allied Health Professionals.
The Top 5 Ways Allied Health Professionals & HSCPs Benefit from an EPR Solution
1. Allied Health Professionals Gain a Secure Record of Patient Treatment Details
A reliable EPR, such as Inter-AHP, equips AHPs such as Physio, OT’s and Dieticians, with a secure solution for capturing patient treatment details that can be easily retrieved and reviewed from any web-enabled device. Gone are the days of trawling through paper charts, freeing up time for delivering care to patients.
2. Seamlessly Enables Multidisciplinary Care from Multiple Allied Health Departments
HSCPs often work together when treating a patient as care from multiple allied health professionals is often required. A robust EPR supports the delivery of multidisciplinary care as AHPs across multiple disciplines and coordinate together and seamlessly share information pertaining to the care of each particular patient.
3. HSCPs Can Track and Monitor Resource Allocation
With scarce resources across many allied health professional departments, it can be a challenge to track and monitor the precise location of resources. Inter-AHP enables HSCPs to monitor and track the location of resources and when they are due back, supporting enhanced care planning across all patients based on resource availability.
4. Enhances Future Treatment for the Patient
A user-friendly EPR, such as Inter-AHP, equips authorised HSCPs with details of all previous treatments recorded across multiple allied health disciplines for the patient. This provides a holistic view of patient care to date, equipping the allied health professional with information to support the delivery of safer patient care.
5. Improvement through Reporting and Analytics
Inter-AHP supports departmental managers through the delivery of meaningful reports to highlight areas for improvement and steer departmental decisions. Measuring and monitoring are essential for driving improvements that ultimately lead to better patient care, and Inter-AHP facilitates this need with its informative reporting capabilities.
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The benefits of Inter-AHP are aplenty and the best way to see the solution in action is to set up a quick demo! Get in touch today to see how Inter-AHP can help facilitate coordinated care across your HSCP departments >>
How Can Inter-AHP Support AHPs Such as Physiotherapists, Occupational Therapists & Dieticians in the Delivery of Patient Care?
Inter-AHP is a fully integrated Electronic Patient Record for HSCPs which enables the secure capture of multidisciplinary and integrated patient care. With Inter-AHP, users can securely record and report on clinical information for Physiotherapy, Occupational Therapy, Dietetics, Speech and Language Therapy, Social work, and many other disciplines.
Inter-AHP is available to authorised users and is securely accessed on any authenticated device at any time. Inter-AHP is fully integrated with the Hospital’s Patient Master Index and hospital Patient Administration System (PAS) which eliminates the requirement to re-capture patient demographics and ensures consistency across hospital/healthcare information systems.
By design, Inter-AHP is easy and intuitive to use as the user experience (UX) was a vital component in the solution’s development. The use of drop-down fields ensures greater compliance which in turn ensures that data integrity and quality is inbuilt. This matters a lot- both for patient safety, and when it comes to reporting it means that the outputted data is reliable. It also aids busy allied health professionals using the system, so that they can spend more time on patient treatment and care management and less time on data entry.
HSCPs can easily record and view a patient’s treatment plan, medication, treatment outcomes, appliance provision and history for each patient episode and visit. They can also systematically view their workflow. As all of this is retained in the one system it is more accessible and dramatically reduces the administrative time taken up with retrieving the information from disparate systems or from paper records which don’t score well when it comes to legibility and quality.
The information available in the in Inter-AHP is tailored to the care procedures of each Allied Health department in Inter-AHP. HSCPs can capture information around patient treatments, care plans, types of patient visits e.g., phone visit, hospital visit or home visit.
The result is that HSCPs can devote more time to patient care, instead of time-consuming administration.
What’s more, the system provides the functionality that enables the integration of different HSCP departments as HSCP professionals can readily view their patient care records on a multidisciplinary level with the ability to drill down into each episode of care and individual visit, which supports the coordination of patient care and better use of resources across departments.
Inter-AHP Support Nutrition & Dietetics Departments with a Special Diets Module
Inter-AHP enables collaboration between Dietitians and the catering department to deliver high quality care and support meal-planning across hospitals and healthcare facilities. Inter-AHPs Special Diet Requesting module provides the Dietitian with a simple to use interface that connects to the Catering Department, simplifying meal production and supporting special dietary requirements for patients. The module saves staff time for both the Dietetics and the Catering departments, while reducing meal wastage from the day Inter-AHP goes live and each day thereafter.
How to Support Allied Health Professionals with Non-Patient and Group Activities
HSCPs and Allied Health Professionals do not spend all their time on direct one to one patient care. There is a whole bunch of other non-patient activity that also needs to be attended to. This can include things like time spent on administration, caseload planning and management, MDT meetings, ward rounds and so on. Inter-AHP facilitates the recording of these activities, by capturing details of the amount of time spent on non-patient activities.
Group activities in Inter-AHP facilitates the recording of time spent with groups of patients, the date, and the number of patients in the group. Depending on the discipline, this could include things like Active rehab classes, healthy ageing, or pain management classes.
The recording of all these non-patient and group activities means that when it comes to reporting, more meaningful insights can be obtained to help management understand how resources are utilised within the department.
Book your Inter-AHP Demo Today!
Get in touch today to see how Inter-AHP can help facilitate coordinated care across your HSCP departments.
Reporting and Resource Utilisation for Allied Health Professionals
As the old saying goes – If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it! Inter-AHP delivers the reporting functionality to help HSCP managers and Hospital managers make informed decisions around resource utilisation and allocation.
Reports at a speciality, location, or consultant level around activity levels, patient activity utilisation and non-patient activity utilisation and case mix reports can all be readily produced. The ability to look at patient level costing and activity can help lead to an overall reduction in costs, higher productivity for HSCP professionals and an enhanced patient experience.
If you would like to know more about Inter-AHP why not get in touch? We’d be delighted to answer any questions and show you Inter-AHP in action with a demo – we’re only too happy to give you a guided tour!
