Sollis sweeps South West London

More than 100 GP practices in South West London will be using Sollis Clarity Commissioning Suite to manage patients with long-term conditions, by the end of March.

The suite, which incorporates the Johns Hopkins University’s Adjusted Clinical Groups System, is being delivered to practices through the South London Commissioning Support Unit.

The roll-out follows the success of a pilot at Cricket Green Medical Practice that reduced practice spend on unplanned hospital admissions by 18% over the past year.

This equated to savings of more than £300,000 in total inpatient admission costs.

The South London practice serves 9,000 patients in a high deprivation area and has been using Sollis software since 2001 to help manage patients with long term conditions.

The software provides real-time lists of patients who are at high risk of future hospital admission, using disease codes, primary and secondary care usage, patient demographics and medication spend to stratify patients into different risk bands.

This data is used by the clinicians as the basis for a weekly multi-disciplinary case discussion of patients on the high risk list and to produce associated care plans.

CGMP GP Dr Simon Gilbert said the focus on the practice’s most complex patients contributed to the improvement of care for the whole population.

“It helped drive key concepts around care planning and appropriate use of community resources to improve care and support the patient in the community,” he said.

“Going forward, I see that the tool also has importance at a CCG or cluster level. Future commissioning decisions should be based on clinical insight and understanding the health needs of the population.”

Sollis managing director Nigel Slone said: “The Cricket Green story clearly demonstrates how commissioning intelligence can make a real impact on patients’ care and outcomes.”

He added that Sollis was working with a number of CSUs and CCGs on projects similar to that at Cricket Green.

“When you consider current implementations, Sollis Clarity (with integrated ACGs) is currently processing something in the order of 3m records UK wide. When these implementations are complete this number will rise to 5.5m,” Slone said.