Following on from our blog yesterday, acknowledging Mental Health Awareness week, Patients Know Best’s first customer recognition is… St Patrick’s Mental Health Service (SPMHS).
St Patrick’s Mental Health Service, Ireland’s largest independent, not-for-profit mental health service provider were the first Irish organisation to use a Personal Health Record with their service users. They have been using PKB, locally known as ‘Your Portal’ for nearly a year and have started by using the functionality to enable service users to view their appointment details, complete forms which contribute to their care and treatment, and access links to other resources and websites providing helpful information.
To date they have over 1,000 registered users taking advantage of this functionality and benefiting from having online access available at any time, anywhere.
Other areas of the system which their service users are finding helpful are the files and journal sections. Allowing them to save information into their own personal health record and add entries into their journal, helping them to keep an up to date record of their health.
There has been some great feedback from service users to date which includes:
- Very user-friendly
- One-stop shop for accessing information
- Timely introduction given the circumstances (all services accessed remotely)
Staff also gave some very positive feedback including:
“Instead of going through previous emails for a service user to track correspondence, all the information is held on the PKB Portal”
“Programme packs are currently posted out to the service user but once the packs go online through the PKB portal, the process of forwarding information will be more efficient, and it will cut out posting hardcopies on a large scale”
“User friendly”
“Safe and secure”
The current roll out is within ‘phase one’, with an ambitious multi year programme designed to gradually bring in future phases and increase the features used in the portal to support the following:
- Seeing further key information shared from the electronic health record such as diagnosis, medication prescribed and test results
- Use additional assessments and forms as they become available
- Access informational videos
- Encourage service users in additional monitoring/tracking of their mood, sleep or eating patterns for example to enable more informed discussions during clinical interactions
The SPMHS vision for the portal is to improve their service users journey of mental health recovery, both during and after treatment, by empowering them to view and contribute to their care plan and gain further insight to their health.
We look forward to continuing supporting them and their service users in achieving this vision.
Tomorrow we will highlight a brand new programme of work being led by Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust who are embarking on their digital patient journey as we speak. If you are a Sussex resident, find out more about their plans and how you can get involved.