Improving clinician experience of the Electronic Health Care Record during the assessment process

Objectives and concerns

Aim

  1. Improve clinician experience of using the EHCR system
  2. Reduce the amount of time required to complete an EHCR assessment
  3. Increase the use of EHCR assessment forms by clinicians in the Trust

About this project

When new patients are referred to a mental health team at Oxford Health (OH), the assessing clinicians have multiple forms to complete on the Electronic Health Care Record (EHCR) including assessment, risk, physical health, care plan, clustering. This is in addition to producing a letter to the GP detailing the outcome of the assessment. These forms are located in different locations within the EHCR, they can be lengthy and information can be duplicated on different forms. Further, clinicians have noted that the information requested on certain forms are not aligned well with their particular service. Oxford Healthcare Improvement (OHI) were requested to undertake a project addressing these issues

Methodology

Clinician focus groups were convened from the different mental health services within OH to meet with the EHCR team and develop a process map of the assessment pathway, to understand where the problems might lie in engaging with the EHCR. Following this a further meeting was arranged with the clinician focus group to discuss potential options for changes to the EHCR system.

The following changes were chosen to be tested:

  1. Adding conditional logic to the Mental Health Assessment form to tailor questions appropriately for the different services
  1. Creating an assessment team dashboard that informs the team of when forms need completing
  2. Removing duplications from forms
  3. Auto creation of GP letters

Measures

Improve clinician experience of using the EHCR system

  • Via a survey (5-10 questions) to assess clinician experience of EHCR
  • Survey will be sent out to clinicians involved in the pilot, 4 weeks before and 4 weeks after the changes are implemented

Reduce the amount of time and number of clicks to complete a EHCR assessment

  • Measured using a lab study with 6 clinicians
  • Complete forms for 3 hypothetical patients representing different services: CAMHS, Adult, and Older Adult
  • Time taken and number of clicks will be recorded pre and post

Increase the use of EHCR forms by clinicians in the Trust

  • Proportion of forms completed for the number of referrals for 2 teams in the Trust
  • 4 weeks before and 4 weeks after change
  • Calculate GP letters auto-populated for the new EHCR system

Non-urgent advice: Further information

Local project leads

  • Ian Hicks, EHR Clinical Facilitator
  • Tatjana Kovalevica, EHR Technical Project Manager
  • Harry Dodds, Senior Clinical ePCSS Facilitator

QI project support

  • Dr Daniel Maughan, OHI Medical Lead
  • Dr Gurpreet Reen, Researcher for Improvement

Page last reviewed: 27 September, 2021