What is Substance Misuse?
 

This can be defined as the use of illegal drugs and the misuse of other substances likely to lead to adverse physical and mental effects. There are many forms of substance misuse, and the motivation for consumption can range from recreation to depression; however there can be serious health implications for users.
The following five stages can be used to define a user's progression through substance misuse: experimentation, regular use, risky use, dependence and finally addiction.

It is important to realise that substance misuse is treatable, however it often requires close cooperation between the user and the healthcare provider.

What do Health care providers require from a Substance Misuse Service?
 

• A resiliant & scalable clinical application.
• A comprehensive back-office system for generating usage reports required by the National Treatment Agency (NTA)
• A web-based system with a central database containing information on client demographics, referrals, assessments, care pathways, care plans, contact/interventions and prescribing information
• A solution that will also manage all the aspects of issuing and managing the scheduling of client prescriptions and the NDTMS Core Data and DIR Data sets.
• Future-proof technology that will be support current, future, local and national requirements. 

Ascribe's service solutions:
 
Ascribe combines two IT solutions to provide a comprehensive Substance Misuse Service that address the requirements listed above:

• A Mental Health & Community Care Patient Administration System with the option to integrate to a SMS Prescription Manager which can support 'controlled substance' prescribing and be used to generate reports required by the NTA

• Alternately, the SMS Prescription manager can be deployed alone with limited case management functionality and the full SMS Prescription Manager service

Key Features:
 

• Care Planning - Care plans are one of the most important and effective tools for clinicians to address and improve a service user's physical and psychological well-being, they can assist in reducing their drug use and levels of criminality and also support improvements in their social connections. Ascribe SMS provides an electronic, web-based care plan tool, using a series of highly customisable web forms that provide for specific requirements, eg support for needle exchange and harm reduction assessment/reviews.
  
• Prescribing - Ascribe SMS integrates substance misuse prescribing to allow practioners to schedule, monitor and prescribe medication to service users requiring prescription interventions.
  
• NTA Reporting - Underpinning the client registration, care planning, service recording & prescribing capabilities is the automatic production of the full NDTMS download. The system is fully compliant with the latest core data set version.

What benefits can be expected:
 

• Batch Printing FP10MDA and FP10 Prescriptions 
• Producing the NTA Core Data Set for the NDTMS
• Delivering the Drug Intervention Programme data requirements
• Better Management reporting, saving Admin time & expense
• Pick-up scheduling that can deal with Public and Client holidays

Improved clinical safety by:
 

• Maintaining a full Client Clinical and Medication Record
• Effective prescription monitoring
• Being aware of Client warnings
• Improved understanding of outcomes
• Reducing transcription errors
• Using a Service-wide Drug Formulary
• Managing increasing and decreasing prescription dosing

Improved access and availability by:
 

• Using a Web based architecture to rollout the software to multiple sites. Users can move between locations, accessing information as they wish. Clinicians can prescribe on-line.
• Information could be shared across organisations
• Availability of data for aggregation, analysis and feedback at local, regional and national levels.

Improve your Financial Control by:
 

• Contract Monitoring
• Identifying adverse expenditure trends earlier enabling more effective action
• Better understanding the use of pharmaceuticals across the Service and its associated cost growth

Peace of Mind:
 

• Continuous support available from a professional help-desk support team and development team within normal hours and out-of-hours if required.
• System implemented with a professional approach to project management, staff training, testing and quality control accredited to the ISO EN 9001:2000 standard.
• Future Proofing is built into the solution. All Ascribe plc solutions are developed to be compatible with the national healthcare initiatives and ‘Connecting for Health’ (NPfIT). Annual support and maintenance contract ensures that the system maintains the standards and outputs required.
• Scalability is not an issue with web based architecture