Continuity of Care
In the recent “future of general practice” document it talked about the importance of continuity of care - a significant reduction in mortality and morbidity if you have named GP care - even if thats in a supervisory role. The document talked about having a named GP in charge of X pts perhaps supervising the ARoles and other staff looking after that patient but knowing whats going on - being able to track care.
Do we need to completely rethink out EPRs to enable/improve this?
We currently have few current tools to ID who is looking after who - if ive seen a pt 5 times are they mine? if ive referred them are they mine? do we let pts choose who is their GP do we distribute them equally? some pts need more care than others are my 2300 pts needing as much care as someone elses? Can we add tools to our existing systems to enhance named care
However the whole current concept of how our EPRs work doesn’t give a GP a view of how their patients are doing - who is seeing them - what is happening to them…
Do we need dashboards? can we learn from project management software - think of each patient as a project - where are they on their Gannt chart - who is stable - who is being investigated who is requiring treatment - who is the highest risk - who was admitted last night - who has seen the DNs - who is on a pathway and is breaching the limits of that pathway?