Islington's Integrated Health and Social Care System Reaches 200,000 Milestone
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The London Borough of Islington's social services department and NHS Islington decided to share information about clients two years ago in a bid to eradicate duplication of effort and to ensure that each individual received the best and most appropriate care services available.
They installed Liquidlogic's PROTOCOL electronic Single Assessment Process (eSAP) software to handle a highly diverse resident population of some 180,000.
The software is now used by 300 managers, social workers and occupational therapists and 100 district, community and specialist nurses, who this month completed their 200,000th eSAP assessment.
Benefits have included speeding up assessment and referral, expanding the reach of the services, and giving people more control over their own care. Islington now has extensive electronic referral pathways between NHS and Social Services teams and the sharing of records and case notes as well.
The use of the system has been extended to out of hours services such as emergency social work and night nursing and is available 24 hours.
'The combined health and social care system has made a tremendous difference to how we operate', said Howard Smith, E-Business Development Manager at the London Borough of Islington.
'The Islington Welfare Rights team now accepts e-referrals from all practitioners using the eSAP system and sends onward referrals to the Department of Work and Pensions and housing teams electronically.
As well as speeding up the assessment and referral process, the system has also enabled contact with people who may previously not have been reached.
The process has recently been improved by the addition of an online self assessment tool which enables users or their representative, to start the contact assessment process securely over the Internet.'
'We are delighted to have had the opportunity to see at first hand the benefits that joint working between a Local Authority and a local NHS service can bring', said Denise Harrison, Sales and Marketing Director at Liquidlogic.
Liquidlogic was acquired in July 2009 by healthcare IT specialist System C as part of a deliberate strategy to build the UK's first major health and social services supplier.
The two companies are now working together to deliver integrated solutions across the health and social care sector. Dr Ian Denley, Chief Executive of System C, said the company was committed to delivering productivity gains by integrating services.
'Islington is a fine example of how this can be achieved by using the appropriate technology to interface between organisations, services and care settings, and by putting the patient's needs firmly at the centre.'
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