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Clinic Focus – Crystal Palace
Physiotherapy and Sports Injury Centre
As part of our ongoing series of articles that focus on PPS users, this
time we are taking a look at PPS Clinical Notes. This article has been
kindly submitted by Crystal Palace Physiotherapy and Sports Injury Centre.
The Crystal Palace Physiotherapy and Sports Injury Centre is a busy
private practice in South London. They
have 15 clinicians (mostly Physiotherapy and Sports Massage) and have
recently started a new Triage Service for a Local Consortium of GP’s
under the Practice-Based Commissioning framework. They have been using PPS
for 6 or 7 years and use almost all of its functionality except (until
recently) Clinical Notes and Custom Forms.
PPS Clinical Notes in the workplace!
“We are growing quickly” says Bevan Ellis the Clinic
Director, “and have always found PPS to be instep with that growth.
It was a logical progression for us to computerise our Patient Notes at
some stage. A recent review of our Environmental Policy made us rethink the
large volume of paper flowing around the clinic and we also wanted to
minimise the time our admin team spends ‘hunting for notes’
(in-trays, letters pending, discharges etc etc.)
“We have a large number of patients coming through our door, and
saw the reduction of paper, centralising all patient information and a
further streamlining of our processes as key to managing this volume. There
is also the added bonus of being able to read colleagues notes if you have
to pick up one of their patients so thought that the timing was right to
make this move.
“We have staged the changeover to avoid too much chaos and are
currently running a pilot with our triage service. We initially put a
process of scanning and attaching documents so that any external documents
(e.g Letters from Consultants) are dealt with
appropriately and attached into a patients log. This has been a valuable
step in itself, as we can now pull up any correspondence that we have about
a patient in chronological order instantaneously. The patients are
impressed that we have all of their information to hand and it comes across
very professionally which can only enhance our reputation in the long-term.
“Designing the Forms that we use at the Initial Consultation is a
work in progress. We use specialised forms for each joint and it has been a
time consuming job while we test and adjust the various versions that we
have created. We are coming
towards something that we can use easily, and the Triage Service is now
using a form specifically designed for that. There is quite a bit of time
upfront while you develop the various questions in the Custom Forms Tool
but it is worth it in the long run. The notes for Follow-up Consultations
are already in the SOAP format that most physio’s are familiar with so that has been
an easy step to take (and you can customise this as well).
“The flip side of all this reliance on IT is that there needs to
be excellent support in place (I believe the guys at PPS describe us as an
‘abuser’) both from a PPS program point of view and also from a
network / server point of view. We have excellent relationships with both
PPS and our general IT support which makes our life run reasonably smoothly
but there has been the odd time when things have crashed (very stressful).
It also means that an extra step in your induction program needs to be
added so that any new clinical staff have time to
find their way around the system.
“Overall we have found this move to be very positive for the
clinic. It raises the bar in terms of professionalism and customer service,
makes many administrative tasks easier and will ultimately pay dividends.
We hope to be ‘paperless’ (or paperlight
as I recently heard it described) in the next three months. Already the
efficiencies gained with our Triage Service are considerable.
We would like to thank Bevan Ellis for contributing this article to
the newsletter. If you would like to contact Bevan directly to discuss his
experience of using PPS Clinical Notes, drop him a quick e-mail to b.ellis@cpsic.co.uk
If you are considering going “paperless” but you are
worried about the implications of not keeping paper copies of your notes,
then we advise that you check with the society you are registered with. In
general though you are allowed to go paperless provided that you follow
some simple guidelines. As an example, physiotherapists can check out this
article on the CSP web site: Click Here
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