Under evaluation with potential for adoption
Improving end of life care by sharing data
About
TIER 2 APPROVED
Recommendations from the National End of Life Care Programme, the Department of Health’s End of Life Strategy and NICE quality standards all endorse an integrated, end of life care record.
The national Electronic Palliative Care Co-ordination Systems (EPaCCS), designed to record and share people’s care preferences and details about their end of life care, was piloted at East Cheshire Hospice with plans to roll-out across Cheshire.
The pilot involved:
- Accessing the N3 connection – NHS secure network connecting NHS organisations
- Establishing information sharing agreements with partners
- Introducing new clinical systems, EMIS Web, enabling data sharing with organisations
- Creating bespoke templates to record, share and provide the best end of life care
Results:
- Access by clinicians to real-time information 24/7, improved communication, handover between services and reliability of referrals
- Reduction in number of times patients have to have a ‘difficult conversation’ with a clinician
- Increase in patients dying where they wish to
- Reduction in unnecessary ambulance journeys and hospital admissions
- Improved data collection and organisational reporting
- Creation of Hospice EMIS User Group to share best practice
- Shortlisted for HSJ Awards 2015