Getting to Grips with SystmOne at Humber Mental Health Teaching NHS Trust

In April we reported that the Learning Disability Inpatient and Continuum services at Humber Mental Health Teaching NHS Trust had gone live on SystmOne Community. Three months on, Christine Adams (Business Change Co-ordinator) tells us how they are getting along...

SystmOne Three Months On...

John Baker, Deputy Unit Manager of the Ridings Unit, with a client.

It is hard to believe that it is almost 3 months since Humber, who were the first mental health trust to pilot a solution to support people with Learning Disabilities, rolled out SystmOne Community.

Three months down the line we are beginning to see some real benefits. Gary Green, Unit Manager said, “The system has refined both the data inputting process for clinicians and has improved the quality of the clinical information being recorded.  The admission and discharge process and the referral process have been improved and speeded up.”  Savings have also been noticed in terms of resources as staff no longer need to spend time locating and travelling to units to retrieve paper notes.

David Harling, Nurse Consultant and head of the Continuum team said, "The new system is proving highly accessible, and the mobile solutions we have for the outreach team, ensure important clinical data is recorded directly, which in turn supports much more ‘live’ and accurate assessments being made of a persons behavioural presentation in their own environment".

 At first some of the staff naturally found the system a little daunting but now they are beginning to accept it as part of their clinical practice, with one of the staff reporting, "it is as if it has always been done this way".  Now staff are feeling more confident about the system, they are keen to be able to use more of the facilities which are available.  With this in mind, the in-patient staff have set up a clinical support group and are in the process of starting a group to look at further standardisation of entries, ensuring the same codes and styles are used.  An informal on-site drop in session is also currently in the process of being organised by one of the “superusers”.

There have also been wider benefits in terms of staff development.  In particular one member of staff has gone from not being confident or comfortable with computers to now owning her own laptop and computer at home which she regularly uses and has reported saving £100 by doing her home and car insurance online.

The next phase of work will see access to SystmOne widened to include medical staff and the community LD Teams whilst the final appraisals of the pilot are completed.

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Thanks to Christine and the team at Humber Mental Health Teaching NHS Trust for this article.