Abstract

Electronic Palliative Care Co-ordination Systems (EPaCCS) are an electronic means of communication and coordination at end-of-life. Arguably implementation of EPaCCS should now be a high priority for all, it will contribute significantly to achieving Ambitions 2015–2020, it is an outcome for end-of-life care in NHS England’s Sustainability Transformational Plans (STPs) and supports general practice now that CQC are inspecting against the end-of-life domain.

Information technology (IT) enables the EPaCCS outcomes and anticipated benefits to be achieved; but it is not in isolation. Implementation requires multiple interdependent factors to ensure utilisation of EPaCCS and realise patient benefits. These include, but are not isolated to, engagement and training, change of clinical behaviours and practice, and identifying palliative patients.

Following initial scoping the IT enabler of choice, My RightCare (MRC) was identified for the locality and was subsequently grant funded by the NHS England Nursing Technology Fund. Unlike other solutions MRC creates a patient-centric unified care plan, specifically being clinician friendly, with functionalities such as auto-population and flagging in your own system. Created care plans, are then shared (with consent) across all health care IT systems; primary and secondary care, including urgent care; ambulance and NHS 111 services. This coupled with developing a suite of tools to support GPs and provider colleagues to utilise as they choose, has supported, engaged, and empowered them to improve coordination of end of life care in the county and create a social movement on the frontline.

We would like to share the experience of a large rural county in achieving clinical engagement through bottom-up transformational change. With a small budget and little authority, but with innovative technology and a different approach we are implementing EPaCCS in our locality. And there are no project plans!