GP wins award for recall system

Dr Lorna Dunlop, GP at Riverview Medical Centre, Johnstone has won the IT Innovation Award for Best Use of IT in Practice at the Scottish Clinical Information Management in Practice (SCIMP) conference for her eponymous Dunlop Recall Management programme.

The system helps to co-ordinate care around chronically ill patients, through an electronic system to monitor patients who required a follow up and automatically recalling them for future appointments.

One of the most effective functions of the system is the “Clinical Care Follow Up Plan” generated. This records data on every patient contact, allowing for efficient data collection, maintenance of care, patient follow up and coding of recall. It can then use mail merge functionality to create recall letters.

Dr Dunlop told E-Health Insider Primary Care: “Recall Management has helped to make keeping track of patients with chronic illnesses much easier. It is a patient centred process which captures all the information needed for follow up appointments and is able to alert the patient and practice team of any missed appointments within the specific recall time.”

She added: “With treatments of the chronically ill, time is off the essence. Before we introduced the electronic system to monitor patients who required a follow up, we used to use paper based notes and save the recall details on a database. Now we can use the recall management software and interact dynamically with the scheduling system.”

As well as making appointments for patients who need a recall, the system also produces reports of missed appointments on a daily basis.

Dr Dunlop said: “We have been able to create a new role in our practice of complex care nurse specialist role where they are responsible for managing the missed deadlines report. They have to spend time looking through the days reports and following up with patients who have forgotten to come back and see us. Above all else, it helps us with the co-ordination of co-morbidity care.”

The Riverview Medical Centre has 5,000 patients on its books. One thousand two hundred of them are on the Dunlop system and say the benefits are already clear.

“We can now capture clinical strategies and follow up plans for each patient within a single system with one data entry point. This helps us make patient understanding of their ongoing care needs more strong and keeps them pleased that there is a system of care in place for them.”

Receptionists can view the scheduling system and make appointments for patients within their follow up period once they have seen the doctor. The system can also be used as an audit tool to measure the delivery of clinical recalls for those with chronic conditions.

Dr Dunlop says that it can be used by all people within the surgery, and training is very simple so users should quickly learn their way around the system. She told EHI Primary Care that it is a proof of concept design and other practices could easily pick it up.

“This system follows up all contract and non-contract areas and can maximise the skills of a practice team in patient centred care. You can take printouts from it if you need to go mobile and you could even develop integrated care pathways using your existing systems. The work is all data coded and males pro-active tracking quick and simple.”

The Dunlop recall system was developed by dbHouston Ltd from a GP paper-based model introduced in the practice in 1996. Dr Dunlop and her team began piloting the IT system in April 2004 and it has gone from strength to strength since.

Dr Dunlop was presented with her certificate and cheque for £1000 by Libby Morris, chair of SCIMP.

Campbell Watt, practice manager at Dalbeattie Clinic in Dumfries and Galloway came second for his web-based intranet allowing staff to complete drug data sheets online, winning £500.

Lindsay Smith, practice nurse at Shotts Health Centre, Lanarkshire, came third for her clinical information database which helped her keep track of her patients using Access, winning £250.