West Yorks action plan almost complete

An action plan produced as a result of an investigation into the use of TPP’s out-of-hours system in West Yorkshire is almost complete, the lead commissioner has revealed.

NHS Kirklees has told EHI Primary Care that seven areas identified for action as a result of the report from Dr David Carson had been completed by May and two further items are due for implementation in June and September.

The report from Dr Carson looked at use of SystmOne out-of-hours by the West Yorkshire Urgent Care service, which covers 2.2m patients across five primary care trusts.

The report’s criticisms included difficulties in identifying patients who had called more than once in the previous 72 hours; mobile equipment that was “almost impossible to use in the environment in which it has been deployed”; and problems acknowledging whether information passed to the mobile system had been received.

After the report was published, the PCTs involved in the service said it had “not enjoyed consensus” and supplier TPP said the report contained misunderstandings about how the software worked or made criticism that were not software issues.

Last week, the West Yorkshire Urgent Care Task Group, which drew up the action plan following the report, said that the work completed by May included ensuring that previous patient history is available when patient call/file is opened.

It also included the appearance of warning dialogue boxes on SystmOne at appropriate times along the patient pathway and clear alerts when the system is operating offline and is not being updated live.

GPs also now have the correct access rights to match patients against the Spine and testing and training has been completed.

Outstanding work at 25 May included the ability to update live calls on SystmOne and visibility of workload across the whole pathway. The task group said this would be included in the next maintenance release, due for June 2010.

The group said preferred hardware and build for the mobile solution had been agreed by all parties and the procurement process had begun with new hardware expected to be implemented in September.

Last month, NHS Direct published its lessons learned from the start-up of the West Yorkshire Urgent Care Service which included 45 recommendations on the bidding process and early implementation of the service.

According to minutes presented to NHS Wakefield last month, NHS Direct is still under remedial notice for key performance indicators in West Yorkshire related to call response times, the percentage of calls referred for a 999 ambulance and the proportion of home visits passed to the treatment provider as urgent or emergency visits.