Practice OOH Message Management

Overview

The purpose of the SOP is to define the procedures for managing message queries from Practices to BrisDoc’s Head Office by the staff based there and the retrieval and management of failed messages by in hours staff.

Practice queries mainly fall into two categories

1. The practice has not received any messages for x days or the fax machine/DTS/email is or has been broken – can BrisDoc re-issue the messages?

 

2. The practice is changing clinical systems and therefore BrisDoc needs to change messaging formats and configuration.

 

Failed messages are generated because there is insufficient data within the Case to direct the message back to the patient’s surgery or the patient was from outside the BNSSG Area.

Managing Message Queries from Practices

Roles and Responsibilities

If no messages have been received for a number of days by a surgery this requires a Case Search in the Hosts Menu (OOH) or Lookup Case Details in the GPSU Menu (GPSU) within Adastra using the advanced option for the Practice search and the time period, to confirm if there were any messages to be sent during this time.

NB some practices get concerned if they don’t get regular messages and sometimes their patients simply have not presented to the OOH Service and as such, there are no messages.

The person taking the request should check if there are cases during the period requested and if these have not been received, messages can be re-issued in the original format i.e. FAX, Email, DTS or in an alternative format e.g. if DTS/Fax/Email is broken they can be -reissued via Email or Fax ONLY.

This can be achieved by going to the Surgery Message menu and selecting the correct message type in the Message Re-issue Screen, prior to selecting the practice or case number.

If the message format is different i.e. Fax or Email has been requested as an alternative, Go to the Workflow and Capacity or GPSU menu and look up the surgery details, the contact tab should be checked prior to re-issue to confirm that the contact details for the practice contains the correct information i.e. email address and fax number.

If the message re-issue does not resolve the problem, please raise the issue to the Head of Business Information and Projects or the Performance and Information Analyst.

Please enter details of the request in the Log which is located in S:\IT Manager\Adastra\ OOH Message Re-Issue Log.xls. If you are working at a site that does not have access to the S drive then please inform the Head of Business Information and Projects or the Performance and Information Analyst that it has not been added to the S drive.

Also please inform the Head of Business Information and Projects or the Performance and Information Analyst of these requests because they are a form of information request that we need to check at a later date and maybe indicative of a wider platform issue that requires investigation.

Practices changing messaging formats.

All these requests need to be sent to Head of Business Information and Projects or the Performance and Information Analyst with details provided by the requestor via email.

This will enable the configuration changes, testing to be completed with confirmation from the practices that the configuration changes have been successfully made.

Details of how adherence to the SOP is managed

Adherence to the SOP will be managed by review of the log on a monthly basis and via exceptional issues that arise that indicate requests have not been channelled correctly. The review will be carried out by the Head of Business Information and Projects and issues/exceptions will be reported to the Service Delivery Director for resolution.

Retrieval and Management of Failed Messages

Adastra will direct the failed messages to the brisdoc.failedmessages@nhs.net account.

This may be accessed from any site with a N3 connection.

The failed message will be an email with the Case Report Attachment.

To process the failed message, follow the steps below.

Setting email and Adastra Access

1) Log into the email account above.

2) Scroll to the bottom to the oldest case and click on case – which then gives the case number.

3) Login into Adastra.

4) Useful ‘Tabs’ to have open to deal with the messages are:

• Case Search,
• Case Edit,
• Patient Edit,
• Look-up Patient Details

5) To manage the messages also open up Surgery Messages and Message Re-Issue ‘Tabs’

Note: Each surgery has a different way they receive their PEM messages from us.

This is either by fax, email or DTS. You can check how they receive their messages by going into Workflow & Capacity (OOH) or GPSU (GPSU) > Look-up Surgery Details > Enter the Surgery Name > Click the on-Messaging Tab > within this box it shows you message type and how they receive their messages.

Reviewing a Failed Message

In Case Search, enter the relevant Case Number that needs checking and search. Click the active time to filter the cases so that the most recent cases show at the top in date order, this means that your case should now be at the top of the list. Click into the case to see why this case has landed in the failed message email, there several reasons why this may have happened.

1. The patient is unregistered and has no GP (this should be highlighted in the notes somewhere so that it’s obvious they have no GP)
2. The patient has recently moved to the area so still with an old GP or in the process of moving GP’s.
3. Temporary residents – people who live elsewhere who are staying in our area – this will be obvious because there should be a home and current address set and also their own GP surgery will be highlighted.
4. Out of area patients who have slipped over the border i.e. patients who live in Keynsham, Burnham-on-sea, Chepstow etc. These should be picked up by the Out of Hours team and re-directed but sometimes they do get missed.
5. Brisdoc patients who surgeries have been entered incorrectly by 111 and not corrected.
6. Brisdoc patients with a Brisdoc surgery entered but unregistered instead on registered has been ticked.
7. Overseas patients
8. System error where our system has failed to send the PEM. The record will look correct and all information added. Open up the case and click into all events and this will show that the message failed.
9. Very young babies who have not been registered to a surgery yet.
10. Cases where they live in Bristol, they are unregistered but it’s not clear why.

By looking at the record you should hopefully be able to see the reason the message has failed.

Processing a Failed Message

For each of the instances of a failed message, please see below for suggested course of action.

1. For a patient unregistered. Print the case notes, highlight with a highlighter on the case the reason which should be showing, then return notes to PCSA. See Section Below Forwarding Patient Notes to the PCSA.
2. Print the case notes, highlight with a highlighter on the case the reason, which should be showing, then return notes to PCSA so they can forward to their old surgery
3. Print the case notes, highlight with a highlighter on the case the reason, highlight the patient’s surgery, then return notes to PCSA so they can forward to their own surgery.
4. as above
5. If the surgery has been entered incorrectly by 111, It may be obvious so amend the surgery or if not enter the patient details onto database patient search to see if they have previous encounters, check the encounters as this may give you the correct surgery and amend if this is the case and re-issue message.  If not send the message to the PCSA.
6. These failed messages are to do with a system error, the patients are in our area, are a Brisdoc patient with a Brisdoc surgery but the registered box has been ticked unregistered – for these cases please amend the registration details and re-issue message
7. For overseas patients, it would be documented in the notes, please hi-light with a pen and print case and send to PCSA
8. Open up record and go into show all events, if message failed but re-sent leave the case, if it hasn’t re-sent, re-issue the message.
9. For young babies – give the parent a call, advise they have recently used our service and ask if they have registered the baby yet, or ask which surgery they intend on registering with and amend and re-issue message.
10. These cases call the patient and ask them which surgery they are with and either amend and re-send or return notes to the PCSA

 

Note: You cannot print from Case Edit only Case Search.

When amending records, you need to action this in Case Edit and also update Patient Edit where appropriate.

Forwarding Patient Notes to the PCSA

Once a case has been identified as requiring sending to the PCSA the following step MUST be performed.

• Using Case Edit search for the case, in the general edits screen select the quick text, ‘Patient Notes sent to the PCSA as pts surgery could not be confirmed’ and press update. This will then provide an audit trail for this action, within Adastra.

The case then requires printing and placing in an envelope to be sent to the PCSA.

Avon Primary Care Support Agency (PCSA) Patient Data

South Plaza

Marlborough Street

Bristol

BS1 3NX Making sure there is a confidential label on the envelope. This envelope is then put in the internal mail.

Use of Smart Cards

Where available smart cards should be used to clarify the patient’s surgery and the Patient details should be amended as appropriate.

 

 

Change Register

Date	Version	Author	Comments
6th Sept 2014	2.2	DL	Amended to add management of failed messages
13/01/14	2.3	BD	Changed format
14/01/14	2.4	DL	Added failed messages details with help from ML
15/01/14	2.5	DL	Update PCSA mgmt and smartcard use
15/01/14	2.6	BD	Added in the menu details for GPSU use.
16/01/14	2.7	DL	Final Review and Sign off added Header & Footers back