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GoLive! with RiO across South Gloucestershire

On 22 February 2010, the Community Care Record system (RiO) goes live across NHS South Gloucestershire; this is followed by NHS North Somerset on the 8 March and Bristol Community Health on 12 April. RiO is an integrated electronic care record system which has been designed for use in Community and Mental Health services.

The first services in South Gloucestershire to start using RiO will be Continence, Podiatry, Community Physiotherapy, CATS (Clinical Assessment Treatment Service ), DART (Disabled Adults Resource Team), Nutrition and Dietetics and Intermediate Care. At present community health teams do not have their own IT systems and most services rely heavily on paper and spreadsheets. This is not an effective method for running the type of community health care services that are required, as community health teams have a need for an electronic patient record to support them in healthcare delivery,  performance monitoring and clinical governance.

RiO has a broad range of clinical and administrative functions enabling health care professionals in the community to share information and work more effectively together. It is being delivered locally by community health organisations in partnership with Provider Services, the Avon Information Management and Technology Consortium (AIMTC) and BT. Benefits of RiO include –

• Faster access to ‘real-time’ patient information
• Improved planning of services via availability of improved management information
• Reporting sourced from more accurate, timely data
• Greater visibility of the clinical record enabling teams to view and share information and plan and coordinate care
• Improved quality of care, for example, teams can schedule regular health reviews and plan preventative care
• More effective management for large caseloads, with the ability to allocate, reallocate and share between care professionals.
• Greater patient safety, through correct identification and retrieval of the appropriate case record
• Greater security, as client confidentiality is protected by role-based access

As of 29 January over 80% of training delegate sessions have been completed in preparation of the GoLive! on the 22 February. These sessions, in conjunction with RiO floorwalkers, aim to ensure a smooth transition to RiO across South Gloucestershire which will allow services to access case records, plan work as a team, allocate, reassign and share case loads, and record treatments and assessment which will all lead to an improved quality of care.

Where community health care teams already work closely with GP practices, such as Social Care, it is recognised that the information that community health teams provide to GPs adds value to patient care, and that where community teams work closely with GPs they find real value in being able to access GP clinical systems. This is fully recognised and it is not the intention that RiO should adversely impact this relationship.

The long term aims are to work closely with partner organisations and also system suppliers, such as EMIS and iSOFT, on system integration and sharing information via this route. It is envisaged that much of the detailed record that community team currently maintain on paper will switch to RiO, but that links with GP systems will continue. For more information on RiO, visit http://nww.rio.avon.nhs.uk/