New system supports care equipment service

Ethitec’s ELMS2 system is being used to help modernise the community care equipment loans service across three West Country primary care trusts.

Pluss, a non profit distributing company, which manages equipment loans for primary care trusts (PCTs) in North Devon, Plymouth and Torbay, is using ELMS2 to deal with outsourced Integrated Community Equipment Services (ICES) for the PCTs.

The company needed a new system to consolidate four different databases of equipment loaned by the service including wheelchairs and care equipment.

ICES is a Department of Health-funded initiative across health and social care to develop community equipment services in England, remove unnecessary barriers for users and modernise services.

The mission of the ICES team is ‘to support and encourage the development and integration of people centred equipment services for the enhancement of health, well being and independence’.

Guy Eatherington, contract manager at Pluss, told EHI Primary Care: “We had a good IT system before, but there were a couple of functionality issues that we wanted that meant we had to change systems. We needed to be able to support multiple stores from a single shared database – rather than having the three different stores running separately.”

Ethitec’s ELMS2 software is a modular multi-user system which provides support for the provision of medical aid equipment to people living in the community. The system supports the ordering, stock management, purchasing, asset management, distribution, and collection of community equipment, aided by full support for multiple stores, wheelchair services, third party system links, barcoding, and web based access and ordering.

Designed to meet the specific needs of wheelchair and equipment loan stores, ELMS2 enables the management and triage of referrals into the service, coordination of clinics and appointment waiting lists, as well as the scheduling of new appointments and follow-ups.

Eatherington continued: “By moving to ELMS2 and a shared database, we are able to truly operate as one organisation. It also sets us up for future growth as we can easily add sites as new contracts come on board.

“As we were expanding into wheelchair service management, we really had outgrown our previous software solution, and needed a system that was designed specifically for use in this market. Ethitec had proven experience in the area and ELMS2 provides the relevant features, so it clearly met our requirements.”

The aim is for the system to be available for trusts to record loans and equipment hire themselves on the system at some point, though this functionality is not yet turned on.

Pluss deals with over 60,000 loans a year and wants the system to become the central point of managing what goes on within the business.

Mike Weatherall, ELMS2 product manager at Ethitec, told EHIPC: “Migration of data to store all services was relatively easy and took just six weeks. We can now provide one focal point for all data to be visible and ensure that they can easily keep track of all their stock.

“The day-to-day functionality of ELMS2 has been designed specifically for busy community equipment and wheelchair services. From a more strategic perspective, the system can support multi-site services – making it ideal for third party providers whose portfolio of contracts is constantly evolving.”

The system has been designed to support new government plans for ‘Transforming Community Equipment and Wheelchair Services, where patients will be able to take ‘prescriptions’ to ICES and access services more directly themselves.

Links

Ethitec www.ethitec.com

Pluss www.pluss.org.uk