Paragon Mental Health
Patient and Clinical Information System

The Paragon Clinical Information System, designed to meet the specific needs of Mental Health professionals.

Where effective management of treatment programs and communication between agencies and staff is vital, Paragon provides the tools you need.

Paragon is designed to operate in both large organisations across the Trust's Intranet as well as in smaller units/clinics.

The patient is at the centre of the Paragon System. Paragon builds a complete picture of a patient's package of care from initial referral to the final transfer of care. It supports staff working in multi-disciplinary teams, in diverse locations and in the community. Paragon encourages the dissemination of information with a system of internal warnings and alerts. These in-built triggers prompt staff giving pertinent information as and when they need to know.
The System has been developed to assist in the administrative and clinical aspects of the delivery of care with the following:

Referral Module

All Referrals to the Organisation are recorded with urgency and outcomes, whether or not they lead to treatment. Patients are assessed at referral, and this information can identify possible "at risk" patients even though they do not currently present themselves as such.

Correspondance is generated via mail merge linking into MS Word and all correspondance generated is saved with the patient record.

There is one central Admission record that holds comprehensive details at the time of admission and includes ward/unit transfers, level of care history and consultant spells. A full history of admission(s) is maintained and information pertaining to a referral or inpatient spell is easily accessible.

Current and future Bed Availability is produced by Ward/Directorate/Site in addition to the Admission Minimum data set and Occupied Bed Days report by Team, Ward, District, PCG and PCT.

Paragon monitors Inpatient Waiting Lists by Unit, Ward or District, PCG and PCT. Outpatient Waiting Lists are monitored by Consultant and Service, District, PCG and PCT.

Clinical Module

The Clinical module is at the heart of the Paragon System and has real benefits for medical staff, nurses and clinicians in the coordination and delivery of care.

The Clinical Module combines: Electronic Clinical Notes
Clinical Team Meetings
Care Planning & Leave Status
Incidents
Risk Assessment
Care Program Approach.

Clinical Notes are entered by all disciplines maintaining one central record that is easily accessible throughout the Hospital. Notes are recorded for all patients that have any contact with the organisation. Summaries entered by each discipline are automatically brought forward to the appropriate clinical meeting. Information entered in other modules (Incident, Care Plans, Contact and Outpatients) is linked into the clinical notes to give a continuous dialogue of patient progress. There is also the facility to add your own attachments to a Clinical Note i.e. Word Document. The user can query by Type of Note, Discipline of entry, key word searches between dates and many more.

Clinical Meetings include admission and discharge meetings, CPA care conference and CPA reviews. Appropriate data is brought forward from other modules to be presented at the meeting, giving pertinent and up-to-date information from the teams and individuals involved in the care of the patient.

The Care Plan module defines the care to be provided by each individual or discipline within the team. Individual care plans are grouped together to form an overall coordinated program, and these "groups" are defined by the user. The overall plan incorporates as many individual plans as required. Paragon has a library of "blank" templates upon which staff can draw and individualise the plan for the patient.

Paragon users can send information to other Paragon users via the System's internal e-mail. Incidents, warnings and alerts can be posted in this way ensuring all staff are aware of critical events. Incident statistics for the whole organisation can be produced, in addition to analysing trends for individual patients.

The Risk Assessment highlights relapse indicators, and what actions should be taken, bringing forward relevant Incidents that have occurred. This information can be built up whilst the patient is an inpatient, but feeds into and is an integral part of the CPA module.

The CPA module identifies all those responsible in the care of a patient including relatives and outside agencies, and records the frequency of planned interventions. The actual contacts themselves are entered in the Contact Management and Outpatient's module including all DNAs with reasons, and this information is brought forward to the CPA reviews. Summaries of CPA and care plan recommendations are recorded. In addition, the System maintains a complete audit of all information and when changes are made. This means that staff can look back at any point in time and see what advice was given with regards to specific patients.

Clinical Notes

Care Plans

The Paragon Clinical Assessment tool gives the clinician the flexibility to create their own assessment templates and these can cover any subject. The assessment can be numeric or text based, using pre-defined scoring systems. The answers permitted are set up as part of the Assessment template and warnings are given when incorrect answers are input. Guidance notes can also be entered as part of the assessment template giving the user on-line information, possibly of a clinical nature, about how each question should be answered.

Interventions

Outpatients

The Outpatient module is an integral part of the package of care, holding details of appointments attended and, of equal importance, not attended. A Clinical Note entry is made for the appointment, recording the intervention within the body of notes. The clinic management includes a clinic diary, mail merge appointment/DNA letters and recall lists. The recall list ensures that patients are asked to attend the clinic on a regular basis. The System can be interrogated for activity by clinic, clinician and for Patient's Charter statistics as well as by individual patient.

Contacts and Group Sessions

All contacts are collected whether they take place on a ward, elsewhere within the Trust or in the Community. A Clinical Note entry is made for the contact, recording the intervention within the body of notes. Contacts can be reported by staff or patient for trend analysis and activity statistics.

Client Information Window

The Client Information window, which can be accessed at any point in the System, shows the number of times a patient has been seen as an outpatient or contact intervention within a time period, including the DNAs and when and who last saw the patient.

Reports from Paragon

The Extractor for Paragon

You create and save your own report structures based on any field entered and pseudo fields. Examples of reports:

General Information