Positive evaluation results for long-term conditions assessment tool

The Greater Manchester Electronic Long-term conditions Integrated Assessment Tool (GM-ELIAT) improves assessment processes in community care settings by implementing an electronic needs assessment tool.

CLAHRC Greater Manchester has tested the functionality and feasibility of a prototype assessment tool within a community matron (CM) service. The GM-ELIAT provides an integrated, individualised holistic assessment involving physical, psychological, social and spiritual needs for patients either referred to a community service, such as a CM team, or for patients referred to an integrated team. It has been designed to identify and address unmet needs, identify multimorbidity risk (meaning co-occurring diseases. For example, a person could have diabetes and heart disease and high blood pressure), reduce the time spent on the assessment process in comparison to paper-based forms, enhance the quality of assessment and standardise the assessment process for patients with multimorbidity across an integrated health and social care team.

Overall, results were very positive. CMs found the GM-ELIAT to be superior on time efficiency, providing quality assessment, educational content and delivering a more efficient and detailed assessment process and a more holistic assessment. Automated functions, including calculations and interpretations, were found to enhance the quality of assessment and speed up the process.

Due to a small sample, findings should be viewed as being tentative and test results must be interpreted with caution. View the full evaluation report.

Date Published: 15/01/2014