Community Nurse Referral
In England approximately 30% of community nurse referrals are differed on the first visit with a loss of 5 hours per visit. 66% of this is due to incomplete information on referral (Clover 2010). We were unable to understand the full picture of the origin of the community nurse referrals as these referrals are not measured or monitored by referring or receiving organisations. However we have identified that community nurse referrals originates from acute hospitals, GP surgeries/clinics and other organisations.
Community referral is a service of the ETPIER™ Application Suite.
Purpose
To enable a nurse or clinician to make a community referral for the patient’s with all of the essential information needed by the receiving nurse to be included. For example the reason for the referral, diagnosis, care needs, community services required/arranged, and then to make the referral information immediately available to the next point of care in the patient’s journey.
Improved Outcomes for Citizens
- Reduced dependencies on patient and carers to hand deliver letters
- Faster treatment by having informed clinicians and healthcare professionals delivering care centre around the patient's needs
- Improve experience for the patient with reduced occurrence of repetitions to staff
- Reduced time wastage where community nurses have to stop care delivery in order to find information
- Reduced errors, accidents and incidents with patients who are unable to answer questions
Benefits
- Highlight the patient’s care needs in the nursing assessment form
- Simple and easy to use interface
- No duplication of effort
- Interoperability with the originating and receiving electronic patient record systems
- Accessible from anywhere
- Complete audit trail
- An opportunity for organisations to accurately measure and monitor service usage