Ulysses is working on compliance with DPSIMS, we were the first to complete the private beta testing early last year (2020).

We piloted with two Trusts (an Acute and Mental Health) who entered the required number of Incidents through Ulysses, and uploaded successfully to DPSIMS.

During October 2020 we were informed that NHS England do not want Local Risk Management systems to map where they already have equivalent fields, but to use PSIMS Lookup tables and terminology throughout.

Ulysses already captures Organisational and Causal information and a mapping process works well as it does not disturb notifications rules, security or reports. Ulysses also captures more than Patient Safety Incidents. However, as NHS England has come back that they will not accept anything other than their coding we are currently reviewing the best way to capture this information without too much duplication.

Whilst we are working with NHS England towards compliance, we want to ensure that the changes made are the best way forward for the customer and the systems, and that reporting incidents does not become an onerous task for clinicians.

To review the headings that will need to be captured and how this will impact the organisations collection of Incidents follow this link; you need to click on the Record Anonymously once the form is open PSIMS Incident Recording (psims-online-incident-recording-ci.azurewebsites.net)

The Ulysses Bereavement system has been developed to support the services offered by Healthcare organisations to those that have been bereaved. Designed in conjunction with Health Professionals, the system has been enhanced to meet the requirements for the new National Medical Examiner system. It produces the output to populate the new Medical Examiner Officers Quarterly report as required by NHS England and NHS Improvement.

The key aim of the Medical Examiners Process is to see what lessons can be learned from deaths, particularly those that involve vulnerable people, and for this to be translated into service improvement. The Ulysses System provides a place for all findings to be brought together, from clinicians, carers, next of kin, and for conclusions and outcomes to be entered.

Ulysses Bereavement

Learning from Excellence (LfE) is a system for reporting episodes of good practice or when things work well. Excellence can be thought of as both opposite to and complementary to traditional incident reporting systems but with a simpler form and a different process for handling the reports.

There are two main reasons for introducing LfE. Firstly, to show appreciation to staff for their good work and secondly to learn from their excellent practice. It is important to learn from incidents and near misses reported as they identify areas that can be improved. However, constantly focussing on incidents can be demoralising and it’s known that the emotional impact for staff involved in an error can be significant. Some balance is needed to help staff develop their resilience. It is all too easy to forget that lots of excellent work takes place every day; staff tend to accept this and move on. Learning from Excellence is introduced to provide this balance and it enables the organisation to identify when things work well so that more of this happens in the future.

Ulysses Excellence

As you will be aware there is a project underway called DPSIMS (Development of the Patient Safety Incident Management System) that will replace the current NRLS system and incident reporting process for NHS Trusts. We are working with NHS Improvement, who are leading on the project, to ensure that all our customers will be able to report from Ulysses to DPSIMS. This development is currently underway and will ensure that Ulysses collects the additional information required, and creates the output in the format for upload to the new system. We have sites in place for the initial private pilot which is due to take place from April. NHS Improvement have said that a public pilot will take place once feedback has been evaluated and any changes made, it is envisaged that this will be during the Autumn..

Ulysses will ensure that all our customers are contacted and updated as and when required for this new project. Please note that organisations can continue to report to the NRLS during the pilot phases.

Marcos Manhaes - Head of NRLS at NHS Improvement m.manhaes@nhs.net attended our user group meeting in London in January, and he said the rollout has been delayed until 2020.

The focus of the day will be the new developments particularly those for the Management of Incidents, the latest developments in Dashboards and discussing Lessons Learned. We are also pleased there will be guest speakers from DPSIMS (replacement for NRLS) and MHRA (Ulysses is piloting the automatic sending of adverse drug reactions to Yellow Card).

The times will be approximately 10:00am start and 15:30 finish, and we will be covering recent enhancements plus future development plans.

The meeting is a full day and lunch will be provided. Travel arrangements and parking is at your own cost.

To reserve your place please email usergroup@ulysses.co.uk

Ulysses Investigation supports all types of investigations from 72 hour review through to full Root Cause Analysis (RCA) and the Serious Incident (SI) process. Each Level of investigation can collect different information guiding the user to provide the relevant data at each stage. The system uses versioning to build on the previous information collected, allowing users to see how the investigation has progressed. Many staff can be involved at each level and they are able to keep a commentary alongside the information, auditing reasons behind the decisions made. The Investigation is an extension of the incidents and complaints process and is available as part of the Management of the information.

Ulysses RCA

Excellence reporting promotes positive reinforcement and praise. Staff morale correlates with better patient experience. Richard Hixson - Consultant in Anaesthesia and Critical Care at County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust has written about his organisations use of this very useful tool within Ulysses Incident http://learningfromexcellence.com/blog/

Ulysses Incident provides a straight forward and easy to use web-based solution for the reporting of all Clinical and Non-Clinical Incidents and Accidents, Near Misses and examples of Excellence. This includes Patient, Staff, Information Governance & Security events.

The pages are tailored to the type of Incident being entered, avoiding unnecessarily long forms that dissuade staff from reporting. Anonymous reporting is available so that Incidents involving employment issues can be entered e.g. unsafe working conditions, harassment / bullying. Managers access the information for which they are responsible, having a clear view of the Incidents / Near Misses that have occurred and the actions that need to be completed.

Action Plans can be tailored to the individual incident, or identified as part of the Service Improvement activity within the Organisation. The Lessons Learned module ensures that learning is disseminated to reinforce positive processes and prevent mistakes being repeated. Information recorded is then shown in dashboards, tailored for the user as they log in to the system.

Our users include NHS Organisations (NHS Trusts, CCGs, CSUs, Ambulance Trusts), Charities, Hospices, Independent Providers, Fire Services and Councils. The system is scalable, configurable and adaptable for use in any size Organisation.

Ulysses Incident

Ulysses Audit supports the Organisation in demonstrating that their Quality Strategy is effective by providing evidence based information. Organisations use the process of auditing to monitor compliance against national and local standards, the results and conclusions are used to improve patient care and outcomes. The results can be used to inform the risk registers and the risk profile for the organisation. In addition, when changes are implemented, the re-audit feature is used to ensure improvements are sustained over time. Reports can be produced based on the audit results, clearly showing upward or downward trends and identifying where additional resource is required. Therefore this enables the organisation to demonstrate to Commissioners, the Care Quality Commission and other external organisations that evidence based care is being provided.

For more details please contact us 02392 440540 sales@ulysses.co.uk

Ulysses Audit

Due to the increase in the amount of information to be disseminated and the number of Alerts issued from external agencies, managing the communication process and keeping a full audit of individual responses and actions has become increasingly complex.

Ulysses Alert manages and audits the communication between the Organisation’s Information Lead, the coordinators and the staff who determine and implement the actions. The Lead can send email reminders when target dates are nearing and reports can be manually or automatically produced showing performance against targets. Use Ulysses Alert for the dissemination of any information, such as policy documents, NICE Guidance, FSN’s (Field Safety Notices) from external agencies e.g. MHRA (Regulating Medicines & Medical Devices). Security within the system ensures that Alerts are only viewable by appropriate staff members.

Ulysses Alert

Under the National Guidance on Learning from Deaths released earlier this year, Trusts are required to investigate a proportion of Expected Deaths in addition to Unexpected Deaths. There is also a requirement for the review process itself to be structured to identify and share Recommendations and Learning.

We have been in contact with the Health Quality Improvement Partnership who are involved in the NHSI initiative into mortality review and reporting.
The preferred option is not to introduce another system to capture this information, but to use the systems and processes already in place where much of the information required is already captured.

There has been a lot of interest in this subject, and therefore we are going to hold a webinar to discuss this approach in general on:

Monday 16th October at 14:30

The webinar will also include a presentation from one of our customers already using Ulysses Incident for mortality reviews.

Please email usergroup@ulysses.co.uk if you wish to join in the webinar, we envisage it will last approximately 30 - 45 minutes.

In May 2015 we released an update for the Ulysses Customer Services module and the new quarterly reporting process for KO41. The submission for quarter 1 2015/16 is required before the end of August and our customers have been using this new upload process successfully.

All customers have been invited to our user group meeting on Tuesday 10th February in Birmingham.

We will be discussing the Alerts module and the management of serious incidents (SI"s).

If you have not received your invite please email info@ulysses.co.uk and we will forward an invitation to you.

This inaugural event has been developed to play a major role in connecting managerial, medical and clinical leaders with those that can provide both advice as well as tangible solutions to support the delivery of better patient care.

The event takes place at London ExCel on Wednesday 26th & Thursday 27th November, come and meet the team on stand C57.

All customers have been invited to our Development/Networking meeting on Tuesday 22nd July in Birmingham.

We will be discussing how the Ulysses Incident & Vulnerable People modules meet your requirements, how the system could be improved, statutory fields, questionnaires, reporting to other bodies, staff feedback, and different levels of safeguarding incidents.

If you have not received your invite please email info@ulysses.co.uk and we will forward an invitation to you.

All customers have been invited to our Development/Networking meeting on Tuesday 8th July in Birmingham.

We will be discussing how the Ulysses Customer Services module meets your requirements, how the system could be improved, your use of the module as a case management system, medical revalidation and reporting to the CCG's.

If you have not received your invite please email info@ulysses.co.uk and we will forward an invitation to you.

The inaugural Ulysses National User Group meeting is being held on Thursday 5th December in Birmingham and all users have been invited to attend.

The latest release of Ulysses plus other developments will be discussed at the meeting; with over 150 attendees already confirmed we are expecting this to be an excellent event and a great opportunity for knowledge sharing within the Ulysses community.

The Questionnaires have become an integral part of incident reporting, gathering additional information either at the time of the incident, or later as part of the further investigation or RCA. Questionnaires are used for diverse purposes such as Cardiac Arrest, Pressure Sores/Ulcers, Violence and Aggression, Sickness Absence and Falls. They can be allocated to individual staff via the Web Incident Management, for example Occupational Health could be requested to complete a form to provide additional information for a staff accident.

Ulysses Asset Management provides a comprehensive register of all assets, both medical and non-medical within the organisation.

The system allows Managers to take responsibility for updating and managing equipment records for assets within their areas. This includes the movement of equipment between services and locations, a service history, warranty and documentation. For organisations that have their equipment serviced externally compiling an asset register ensures they are not being charged for equipment not in use or donated to another service provider e.g. charity

Reminders ensure that owners/managers are informed when equipment is nearing the end of its life, out of warranty or due a service.

Ulysses Customer Services collects patient feedback both within the organisation (Local Resolution) and after the service user has gone home.

Many pages can be designed, each with different information and guidance to serve different purposes. For example, links could be setup on the Organisation’s main web site inviting service users to give feedback, signposting to different pages for positive and negative experience: Tell us what we did right    Tell us what we did wrong. In addition, a Local Resolution form could be accessed from the intranet for staff to enter details of issues resolved locally.

A new module is being developed so that any member of staff can raise a Safeguarding Alert for a vulnerable person via a web page. This is managed through the Safeguarding module by the appropriate lead within the organisation. Please contact info@ulysses.co.uk for further information.

NRLS dataset version 2, enabling more in-depth analysis of pressure sores and maternity incidents, has been rolled out by Ulysses. In conjunction with the NHS Commissioning Board Special Health Authority, we are helping with the small amount of remapping required.