Long-term conditions review template assists in identifying multimorbidity risks

The Greater Manchester Electronic Long-term conditions Integrated Review Template (GM-ELIRT) aims to improve review processes in primary care settings. Currently, most GP practices use single disease templates to review patients with Long-Term Conditions (LTCs) at disease reviews. Patients with multimorbidity (meaning co-occurring diseases. For example, a person could have diabetes and heart disease and high blood pressure) may attend for a series of reviews over a short period of time and the clinical assessment is likely to be repeated each time. For practices that already combine individual disease reviews into one or two appointments, separate disease templates are used to complete the review. If the review concentrates on one condition at a time, emerging clinical risks associated with multimorbidity may be missed. GM-ELIRT provides a holistic, integrated review of patients’ LTC needs and assists in identifying multimorbidity risks not currently identified by single disease templates. GM-ELIRT has been developed for three clinical systems: EMIS WEB, EMIS PCS and SystmOne. These have received generally positive responses, particularly for their potential to address multimorbidity, to reduce repetition and for their potential to guide practice by embedded evidence-based guidelines. Patients found integrated reviews to be more convenient and didn’t mind longer appointments if it meant all their LTCs were reviewed at one appointment. Given the small sample sizes, findings should be viewed as being tentative. View the full evaluation report.

Date Published: 24/01/2014