Roll-out of decision support tool for community mental health services wins national award
A project run by GMMH - using a technology called ‘Management and Supervision Tool’ (MaST) to support clinical care and patient safety in Community Mental Health Teams (CMHTs), has been recognised in the National Positive Practice in Mental Health Awards 2022.
MaST is a software platform managed by Holmusk, which displays and analyses health data from existing electronic health records.
The system finds important information which may be buried deep in the clinical records, and may otherwise be hard to find, or easy to overlook.
This means that mental health workers can make informed decisions to effectively manage their workloads, and focus on delivering high quality and safe care to the people who need it most. It also provides valuable information for team leaders to support team members in their day-to-day work.
The National Positive Practice in Mental Health Awards highlight and celebrate best practice in mental health care across the country and hold annual nation-wide awards. The MAST project collaboration between GMMH and Holmusk won the ‘Quality Improvement and/or Service Transformation’ and was highly commended in another two categories: ‘Innovation in Digital Mental Health’ and ‘Innovation in Community Mental Health’ during the ceremony in Durham on 6 October 2022.
MaST was first rolled out as a pilot programme at GMMH in Trafford and Bolton CMHTs in 2020. The pilot found the system to be helpful and enabled easier and quicker decision-making for staff.
Since then, MaST has been rolled out to other GMMH CMHTs in Salford and Manchester.
After 1 year of use, a survey of CMHT staff found:
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85% of respondents reported that information systems helped them manage their caseloads (an increase from 47% before MaST)
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69% of respondents reported that information systems helped them identify those at risk of using crisis services in the future (an increase from 35% before MaST)
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84% of respondents reported that information systems helped them track completion of Key Performance Indicators (an increase from 40% before MaST)
Staff described feeling more in control of their caseloads, having more time:
“Makes me feel I get things done quicker, I feel it’s made my job a hell of lot easier.”
They also described being able to be more proactive:
“Quicker way to see where my clients were up to rather than waiting to be told when things are out of date.”
Dr Remy McConvey, Chief Clinical Information Officer at GMMH said:
“It is great to hear that the implementation of MaST in CMHTs across GMMH has been recognised as a winner in these national awards.
“It reflects the effort, flexibility and learning undertaken by our staff in CMHTs who have adopted MaST, and who have responded to this new technology to support their clinical meetings, supervision and case load management.
“It is recognition of the professionalism of the project’s coordination by our Information Management & Technology and Business Intelligence colleagues, including the work of clinical change leaders who have facilitated this digital adoption process.”
