Choice and Access

Contents

• Key Data Security Caldicott Principles, Privacy by Design
• Our Choice and Access schemes will focus on
• Transformation Plan headlines
• Measures for success

We want digital technology to support our service users, carers and staff across our Integrated Care Systems (ICS) to understand the whole lived experience, to connect care through co-designed, personalised approaches wherever possible.

Where appropriate and feasible, we want our digital systems to help our care services to be truly personalised, tailored and facilitated through digital technology.

We want our service users to have open access to care, to be supported in their understanding of how to obtain care from our services and to be seamlessly sign-posted to the appropriate area of the Trust at all times.

We want to empower our service users and carers with information and we want it to be clear where they are in their care pathway. They should know who their clinicians and practitioners are and have access to the details of who they are likely to be speaking to next, regardless of whether this is within MPFT.

“As a front door for MPFT for appointment booking, we could be, and should be doing so much more with our technology in our call centres”
Karen Davies, Appointment Booking Centre Manager

For those that opt-in, we need our care records to be secure and viewable at any point through patient held records (PHR) and co-designed care plans need to be easily accessible and understood.

Advice and guidance should be available through any means, for example, phone, SMS, email, letter and website. There must be easy access approaches to get in contact with staff across all of our health and social care partners should the need arise for self-referrals and information update requests.

We will involve our service users and carers at all times in their care journey so we can tailor our approaches accordingly and make it easier for our staff to capture what service user preferences may be when it comes to care and correspondence through digital technologies.

We know digital systems do not work for everyone and are not appropriate for everyone. We will ensure that our systems and onboarding processes capture consent, capability, accessibility, choice and decisions at every turn and work to make these mandatory fields for our staff to complete.

“A discussion about whether or not technology could improve my care should happen first. I know technology in delivery of services will go forward and is part of NHS Digital, but I wish there was more deliberation about a blended approach. I am proficient in the use of digital in many other respects but very anxious about its use in delivering mental health services where communication is everything. There’s no substitute for all the nuances of body language in a digital world.”
MPFT Service User

We will also make it easier to report on the completion and capture of these choices and opt-in status across our services and view what these preferences may be outside of a comment on a referral or a progress note.

We will design and commission our systems with privacy and security at the forefront of our approach, including design for key data principles.

The privacy of our service users, the security of data within our systems, and inclusivity and equalities are all affected and managed through choice.

If we focus on technology and systems first, we will get it wrong. Service user and carer choice and access is equally, if not more important than the technologies we deploy.

The Trust’s Information Governance (IG) team and equality leads will work in partnership on processes such as Data Privacy Impact Assessments (DPIA), Clinical Safety Cases, Equality Impact Assessments (EIA) and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) assurance reviews.

These approaches seek guidance and sign-off from each area of expertise to ensure all systems are appropriate, but also ensure that our service user preferences and choices are enacted through technology.

Through the COVID-19 pandemic we know that the waiting lists across the whole of the NHS have increased, and we will need to find easier means of advising our service users and carers what their wait times may be and possible alternative approaches while they wait.

The demand is significant, but so is our potential to help those we can through digital means to speed up some of our historical approaches.

We know we can see more service users through digital approaches, reducing our referral to treatment times. This can be achieved through using methods such as e-therapeutic apps for module-based self-management and digital video consultations that, in theory, enable staff to speak to far more service users through reduced need to travel.

Through our work on supported apps, remote monitoring telemedicine systems and wearable technology, we can increase the choice for service users on how often they might need face to face appointments and tailor the frequency of home visits to suit the individual.

Through improved community scheduling and notification systems, we also aim to enhance the communications to our service users for time slots on when our staff are scheduled to visit homes to improve flexibility and independent living.

We are also mindful of digital inclusion and equalities factors, quality of care and service user choice above all else. If a remote digital approach is deemed not suitable or not preferred by our service users, we will ring, email, SMS message and sign-post to evidence based advice, books, website resources or apps whilst awaiting the next face to face opportunity.

“We need robust Apps for clients to link into service and get key info, Text reminders of appointments, emailed information, podcasts that clients can access about evidence based advice”
Tracey Robinson, Health visiting & school nurse services (0-19) Seisdon Team Leader

Through greater partnership working as part of our Integrated Care Systems (ICS) and 3rd sector approaches, we will be more consistent in our social prescribing approach too.

We will make use of the information available to our staff so we can sign-post and advise our service users on charities, community offerings, therapeutic applications, exercise classes and other wellbeing services.

We will also look to update and enhance well known paper-based processes such as the Red Book for expectant mothers and the ReSPECT document for clinical care in emergency situations. If we can safely digitise these key care plans at either end of the service user’s life, we can improve awareness of choice and care preferences across our health and social care systems.

Regardless of the preferred approach of our service users, we will be able to offer multiple means of obtaining information on appointment or clinic times, and the ability to cancel or re-arrange these through phone call, email, SMS or app.

We will also work on sharing results more consistently in line with preferred contact methods, and enabling information such as pre-assessment forms, consent forms and surveys to be updated via digital means from homes instead of at the point of care or within waiting rooms.

“Digital Technology should enable quick, slick and efficient booking of appointments to enable timely delivery of patient care.”
Mavis Chatterton, AHP Referral Centre Manager, Staffordshire & Stoke-on-Trent

The NHS App will be the preferred approach for MPFT to securely share its records with our service users and carers, and we will continue working with our suppliers and our integrated care record providers to ensure that integrations with the NHS App are planned and executed from the multiple systems in use across the Trust.

“I feel digital technology would hugely change how we deliver our services. With the right support and a can do attitude, the services can significantly improve the efficiency and indeed the quality of care provision. If an app is developed which would be a one stop shop for patients, all they would have to do is put their personal detail and then get access to the information they need.”
Ashish Khiloshiya, Chronic Pain Management Physiotherapist, Staffordshire

Through introduction and development of region spanning integrated care records, continued digitisation and increased deployment of web and app based means of contact and information access, our ultimate aim is for the information to follow the service user and carer around any part of the health and social care system.

We want to reduce frustrated and repeated requests for the same information, reduce clinical risk and improve caring for the whole person and not simply the condition.

Through greater sharing and collaboration of the individual need and better understanding of choice, we can enhance our care services for service users.

A tailored approach will ensure that we are empowering those that can and prefer digital to release more time to support those that cannot or do not want to use digital.

We aim to improve choice for our service users, make personalised care a reality no matter which NHS Trust is contacted, improve attendance rates and outcomes whilst also reducing delay and administrative burden for all.

Our digital solutions will be responsive and wrap around the needs of service users, carers, and our staff

For the staff of MPFT we also understand the importance of choice. We need to empower our workforce through digital means to provide the flexibility necessary in our current ways of working, whether that is community, home based or flexible (covered in the remote working theme).

Through securing our systems we can be flexible and offer staff with greater choice about the devices they use such as Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), Windows Virtual Desktops (WVD) and flexible phone systems, all secured by Microsoft 365.

Measures for success