EMIS swine flu pandemic planning

The World Health Organisation have set the pandemic level to 6 ‘Wide Spread Human infection’.

http://www.who.int/csr/disease/avian_influenza/phase/en/index.html

Whilst you may have considered how you will run reports using your EMIS system to identify your ‘at-risk’ patients (as you would during the annual flu season), have you considered how you would cope if a pandemic did hit the UK?

EMIS have created a pandemic planning course which will help you to identify the types of issues your PCT or practice may come across if faced with a Swine Flu pandemic.

Primary Care – Pandemic Level 6

EMIS can help with in the following ways:

• Provide your staff with the training to deal with coping with an increased level of Flu cases with our ‘Managing your Swine Flu campaign’ half day onsite session.
• Provide training for additional staff employed by the PCT/Practice to cope with staff illness/shortages during the pandemic, half day on site training session.

Training content

Session one – Preparation

• Identify Patients who are potentially more at risk (i.e. those taking immunosuppressant’s, pregnant or at greater risk if they contract a respiratory infection), via Population Manager and Searches
• Use Mail Merge for Flu invite letters, or letters giving patients advice on what to do if they have flu like symptoms
• Batch add appropriate Clinical Term for Flu Invite onto Patient’s Record
• Add a message to Right Hand Side of prescription to advice patients on what to do if they have flu like symptoms

Session two – Looking at the available options for Adding Data 

• Plan and Create a Flu Template to record those patients suffering flu like symptoms and care pathway
• Protocols to facilitate adding of Flu vaccination information e.g. Clinical Term, Diary Date, and Prescription issue etc as this information may be required by your PCT in accordance with the health Protection Agency’s reporting criteria.
• Run Appointment Searches for patients who attended Flu Clinics
• Batch add Clinical Term and Diary Date

Session three – Extracting Information during/after swine flu pandemic

• Build an audit to help you extract and analyse your data
• Build a Recall Schedule for Flu each year
• Build follow up Searches – Searching for patients who have 1st invite letter coded in their record who still have not attended for flu vac

Training for additional staff

In addition to this we can also help with contingency planning. If a Pandemic does hit, your staffing levels may be greatly impacted so much so that the PCT may take the decision to recruit staff unfamiliar with your clinical system to help with updating the system with the details of those patients that have received the vaccine or giving injections and recording this information on a template.

EMIS have put together a half day onsite training session aimed at admin staff and  clinical staff that are recruited to cover the pandemic, this half day session will ensure any additional staff will be able to use your EMIS system instantly.

Admin cover session includes:

• Logging on and basic navigation
• Adding information using templates
• Bath adding data
• Booking appointments
• Merging letters
• Add diary entries
• Register temporary patients

 Clinical cover session includes:

• Batch adding clinical codes
• Add diary entries
• Adding clinical information via:
  - Templates
  - Consultation Mode
  - Medical records
  - Booking appointments 

Booking details

Both training packages are available as a half day onsite training session:

Onsite at Practice - £315 +VAT for a 3 hour session for up to four members of staff

How do I book a session?

Contact EMIS Field Operations Support on 0845 123 4455 or email fieldoperations@e-mis.com for information on how we can tailor our courses to meet your personal requirements.

Online sessions

We run a series of three 45 minute sessions which overview the requirements. You can attend any one or combination of the three.

Click here for more details.