MyHealth Online Into Care Homes
MyHealth Online is a medication ordering system. It was originally launched in Wales in 2011 backed by £1.7 million of funding from the Welsh Assembly Government.
It is available in both English and Welsh, and gives patients the opportunity to conduct a variety of health-related tasks online, including booking appointments and ordering prescriptions. The My Health Online portal went live in all 407 GP practices in Wales in 2015.
This particular project supported the use of MyHealth Online in care homes to improve ordering services, processes and stock control with the expectation that this would lead to a reduction in waste and costs.
The pilot commenced in 2017, with the intention it would be rolled out across the Aneurin Bevan University Health Board. This was completed by 2019 and other Health Boards have implemented MyHealth Online in care homes.
Project Aims
- Improve ordering processes
- Improve audit of medication
- Improve stock control
- Reduce waste
- Reduce costs
As well as implementing MyHealth Online, the team was also responsible for supporting care homes if they had any difficulties using the system.
- All Health Boards
- Public Health Wales
- Welsh Assembly Government
- Aneurin Bevan UHB
Spread
As of December 2019, the portal was also starting to be used by other health boards e.g. Cardiff and the Vale, as a result of them seeing the success of the pilot project.
Scale
In 2019, MyHealth Online was live in care homes across the area.
Pilot
The pilot began in 2017 with the service being rolled out into care homes within the Aneurin Bevan University Health Board area.
Support from GP practices was found to be an element in this project, but gaining this support was challenging.
There were some limitations of the MyHealth Online system regarding its use in care homes, as it was primarily intended as a GP / surgery service.
When implemented properly, MyHealth Online makes the whole ordering of medication in care homes a much simpler process, giving the home better control on what is ordered and received each month. The GP practices found it saved them a large amount of time while pharmacies benefited from not needing to contact care homes to clarify which medications were required.
The pilot was successful and following this was scaled up. The pilot led to other health boards showing an interest in using MyHealth Online in care homes, in addition.
- Users gave feedback regarding the portal’s ease of use.
- There was a reduction in overall stock and also a reduction in out-of-stock items.
- The project saw improved communication between care home, surgery and pharmacy.
- A number of documents to support the implementation of MyHealth Online were produced, using the knowledge gained from experiences in this project, which the project team shared with other Health Boards to make it easier to implement.
Evaluation
The initial project, with MyHealth Online being put into a couple of care homes, showed a £10 per month reduction per resident in medication costs which, when extrapolated across the health board, would result in £420K of savings. This evidenced cost saving ensured Aneurin Bevan took the decision to roll out this project to care homes across the Health Board.