I think the service I led and managed was the first in the United Kingdom to make Personal Computer (PC) access fully available to all physiotherapy staff and by the time I retired from that role all of my out-patient staff had their own work stations complete with PC. I also developed a system which included clinical records, etc. An essential part of my thinking was that all data should emanate from clinical activity. I guess the important thing as far as I was concerned was user involvement in systems design which after many concerted “battles” over a long period I think we managed to more or less achieve.
The text reproduced below is the Leading Article from the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP) Journal of 10th December 1990. Every CSP Journal at that time started with a Leading Article from an invited contributor involved in specific areas of physiotherapy practice, leadership and management in the widest sense. At the time, I was manager and lead physiotherapist for one of the largest district physiotherapy services in the UK and Chair of the CSP Council Management and Information Systems Committee which became the Information Systems and Resource Management Committee.
This Leader was written during the early days of computerised information systems in healthcare, at a time when the introduction of such systems was very patchy and uncoordinated. In many instances Health Authorities, Hospitals and Community and other services were attempting to introduce computerised systems which had been planned and designed for very different services and organisations and which were inappropriate for healthcare, including physiotherapy services. The Leader provides a feel for the “state of play” at the time with the objective of highlighting the importance of, and some of the reasons why physiotherapists needed to become involved and contribute their expertise and input to the development of systems for their services, user input to systems design. At the time of writing the Leader very few physiotherapy services in the UK had computers to say nothing of computerised information management and technology systems and this was before the advent of modern mobile phones, iPad, tablets, networked x-ray systems and much else that we take for granted today.
PHYSIOTHERAPY JOURNAL
December 10th, 1990 volume 76, No:12
LEADER
Why Information Systems for Physiotherapy?
Robert J. Jones – Chairman CSP Information Systems and Resource Management Committee
Everybody who works in the National Health Service (NHS) from whatever background or discipline will be only too aware of the enormous upheaval now taking place as a result of the radical changes brought about by the National Health Service and Community Care Act 1990. Fundamental to these many changes is the requirement to provide more detailed and relevant information than ever before.
The way in which health services will be purchased and provided in the future is the cornerstone of these changes. We are now required to embark on the new territory of contracting physiotherapy services and in conjunction with this are developing methods and approaches to many new and demanding systems, such as quality assurance, audit and the determination of outcome measures, service costing and pricing, the resource management initiative and case mix – the list goes on. The techniques, methods and language we have to learn and use are complex and wide-ranging.
Clearly, in order to be in a position to achieve all this; to be able to show what we are doing and how much of it, how effective and efficient we are and how much it all costs, physiotherapists will need powerful information systems capable of bringing together clinical and managerial data and information. The synthesis of this information will enable us and others to make informed decisions about service provision.
It is essential that we as physiotherapists are in the forefront of systems design for our services. In this way we will be able to ensure that the information we collect is of real use and relevant clinically as well as managerially. All information collection carries a cost in physiotherapists’ time and effort, but so far as possible this activity should be a by-product of clinical activity. It is of paramount importance that data are timely, accurate and easily accessible for physiotherapy managers, clinicians and others to use and that the computer reporting system is flexible in order to enable thorough and cross-matched presentation in a wide variety of formats.
Information is power, and the development of clinically and managerially relevant and sensitive information systems in physiotherapy will enable us to make our own particular contribution in the “contracting” process and the many other clinical and managerial systems now being developed in the NHS. Well developed information systems will put us in a stronger position to influence purchasing authorities and help us to provide the most effective service to patients in the 1990s and beyond.
Featured Image: Taken from an article in CSP Frontline by Chris Tucker, titled Under pressure: paperwork in the NHS, Issue 1, 06 January 2016 accessed online at https://www.csp.org.uk/frontline/article/under-pressure-paperwork-nhs on 23 August 2022.
