CareCentric End of Life: Electronic Palliative Care Coordination Systems (EPACCs)

The CareCentric End of Life programme is developed specifically to provide a co-ordinated approach to the delivery of palliative and end of life care services. It can be used by health and social care providers working across the NHS and social services to co-ordinate care in the last year of a patient’s life. Clinicians, care staff, patients and their carers can jointly plan end of life care, with the security of knowing that up-to-date information, assessments and records are available to authorised users where and whenever they need them.

A single end of life care coordination system

CareCentric's End of Life system can be embedded in most existing systems, meaning that many health and social care users will be able to access the CareCentric end of life record directly from their own computer records. The system works using single sign-on and using patient context eg. a GP using EMIS Web, a hospital doctor using iPM or an out of hours clinician using Adastra, could all call the record directly from their own systems without having to sign on to a new system or re-select the patient.

This allows health communities to create an end of life register, it builds a care record for patients in their last year of life and makes it available in real time to authorised users across the care community. The electronic record is available to all approved staff when and where it is needed. Known data such as allergies and adverse drug reactions can be pulled through from local systems automatically and end-of-life specific details can be entered once and shared amongst all those involved in the care of that patient. By Improving communications between the patient and service providers, including in and out of hours services it makes the patient wishes clear and accessible to all, more patients die in their preferred place of care and there is less distress for patient and family.

EPACCs Benefits

• Encourages early identification of patients approaching end of life and empowers patients to have choices regarding their care
• Encourages partnership working
• Creates an end of life data store which enables accurate audit of costs and effectiveness of service provision
• Embedding CareCentric within other operational systems makes it fast and easy to use