Single Assessment Process

Resulting from the National Service Framework for older people, the Department of Health has published a guideline for a Single Assessment Process (SAP) across Health and Social Services. The aim is to ensure that older people receive appropriate, effective and timely responses to their health and social care needs and that available professional resource is used effectively. It is key that the scale and depth of assessment is kept in proportion to older people’s needs, that agencies do not duplicate each other’s assessments and that professionals contribute to assessments in the most effective way.

The implications of the Single Assessment Process will affect older people, social workers, nurses, therapists, GPs, geriatricians and old-age psychiatrists. A whole host of other organisations will also be involved, including GP surgeries, community health services, hospitals including A&E, Outpatients, Medical Assessment Units, NHS facilities (including walk-in centres, day hospitals, community rehabilitation teams), community mental health teams, social services offices and access points, Care Direct, Housing, Benefits, and Transport.

Local agencies will need to work to an agreed single assessment summary for the collection of information on older people who are assessed, whether or not they receive services. In time, the objective will be for a virtual single assessment summary to be constructed from electronic records. The three components of this should at least cover basic personal information, needs and health and a summary of the care plan.

At Esprit, our solution for SAP enables multiple organisations to collaborate in a seamless, single process when assessing, service planning and caring for older people. We have worked in many projects where collaboration is critical to the success of the project and the process, as is the ability to use a multi-channel approach. Consisting of a federated communication system that has been built from the ground-up, our solution facilitates the support of complex business processes across multiple organisations, adhering to the security requirements inherent to each organisation and industry standard health privacy and data protection standards that must be integral to a SAP Information System. Our solution can also incorporate a variety of mobile access devices such mobile technology and PDAs in addition to office-based IT.

We will work with you to develop a strategic approach to addressing the complex issues of SAP and provide you with an information system that makes it possible for you to addresses the fundamental issues of assessment and discharge planning, care and service planning, communication and technology. Our solution utilises web-based architectures and is able to contain research-based assessment applications in order to produce measurement or indicator information and reporting. In addition, our solution incorporates a powerful, multi-organisational referral system and supports a robust set of system user functionality as well as being able to comprehensively and graphically manage multi-organisational workflows.

We can help you to provide services across the whole care continuum, addressing the requirements of the Integrated Care Record Service (ICRS) and ultimately working towards the vision of making the integration of social care and health a reality.