HSE Digital Transformation - MSc. in Digital Health Transformation.
Student Final Year Projects 2021
Project Name: eReferrals from General Practitioners to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services for Intellectual Disabilities
Students: Úna Browne, Ciarán Coughlan, Donald Munro, Claire O'Halloran, Anne Jaisy Paul Jesudason, Anca Trulea
Description: Our project provides a digital solution to support eReferrals from General Practitioners (GPs) to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS) using the Healthlink infrastructure, with particular focus on Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service for Intellectual Disabilities (CAMHS-ID) in the Cork region. CAMHS-ID is a sub-speciality of CAMHS, focusing on children and adolescents with intellectual disability and a suspected or confirmed moderate to severe mental illness. CAMHS has seen a 25% increase in those availing of its services between 2012 and 2019. At the end of 2018 there were 2,526 cases waiting to be seen according to the “Delivering Specialist Mental Health Services Report” (HSE, 2018). In April 2019, 316 children and adolescents were waiting over 12 months for their first appointment, compared to 170 in May 2017. The overall solution was to reduce the number of incomplete eReferral forms, thereby reducing triage time and overall waiting times for CAMHS-ID patients. Over 289 Cork GPs can now refer patients to CAMHS-ID using this eReferral pathway. Analysis of the eReferral forms submitted since implementation on 10th March 2021 show: (i) increased completeness of the referral form from 34% to 90%; (ii) reduced average triage time from 47 days to seven days and (iii) predicted average waiting time from date of referral to appointment date will be reduced by 41%. The key benefits of this project include: (i) reduction in waiting times from GP referral to appointment for CAMHS-ID patients; (ii) resource cost savings by eliminating paper correspondence between CAMHS-ID and GPs and (iii) resource time savings by reducing administrative workload for CAMHS-ID staff and GP practices.
