System Update (Sept 2020)
2020 has certainly been a busy year so far. We’ve seen new features added to our Medical Job Plan, eLeave, MSF 360 and eRostering products alongside new development work on AHP Job Planning and the NHSI-funded ESR Wrapper and Reality Checker applications.
Job Plan Overview
We started the year with a big change to the Job Plan Overview tab. In response to feedback from doctors and administrators it was changed to a calendar view. This gives a more holistic and manageable view of job plans and allows a quick overview of when in the week all activities occur. You can read more about it here.
Bespoke Revalidation Reminders
We’ve added Bespoke Revalidation Reminders that work in a similar fashion to the Appraisal Reminders. It is possible to customise when the reminder is sent and the content of the reminder notification/email. For example, you may want to send a reminder 6 months before a revalidation is due to remind the doctor that they should have completed an MSF 360 within the last 5 years and have an up to date appraisal:
You can manage Appraisal Reminders by going to Admin, Medical Revalidation, Revalidation Reminders.
User Appraisal Compliance PDF
Users and admins can download a PDF of a user’s appraisal compliance details (this is only for organisations using Appraisal Month). For users, the link can be found on their dashboard under ‘Your Appraisals’. For admins, the link is in the Options sidebar on the user appraisals page.
License Limits
We’ve replaced the medic limit with a license limit per product. There is a ‘Licenses’ link in the Options sidebar on the Admin, Users, All Users page which shows how many licenses your organisation has for each product and how many users have that product turned on.
If the maximum license limit has been reached, it will not be possible to turn the product on when creating a new user account or editing a current user account.
Improvement Request Form
An improvement request form was added for administrators to report bugs and request new features. This is available under Admin, Miscellaneous, Improvement Requests. You can read more about it here.
Job Plans In Discussion
Admins can now mark job plans ‘In Discussion’ on the Admin Drilldown page.
A flag will appear on job plan lists on the admin side of SARD, but nothing will appear on the job plan itself.
You can see all job plans that are in discussion by going to Admin, Job Planning, Job Plans in Discussion.
Recommendation Compliance Reports
Recommendation Compliance Reports for directorates, specialties, locations, position titles and teams are now available under Admin, Medical Revalidation, Recommendations.
Individual Appraiser Feedback Reports
We’ve added a way to generate individual appraiser feedback report PDFs for a set of appraisers. There are options to either generate all the PDFs then review them before creating eDocs and/or attaching to portfolios, or the PDFs can be generated and eDocs created and/or attached to portfolios all at once.
This is available under Admin, Medical Revalidation, Appraiser Management, Individual Appraiser Feedback Reports.
Appraiser Training
Appraiser Training Evidence can now be logged in doctor’s portfolios by administrators. There is a report page under Admin, Medical Revalidation, Appraiser Management, Appraiser Training that shows doctors that have out of date training or training that is soon to be out of date. Appraiser Training Evidence can also be added by a CSV import. You can find this under User Data, CSV Imports, Appraiser Training Import. You can read more about this feature here.
Appraisal Lead Report Improvements
Many improvements have been made to the Appraisal Lead Report. Please visit our blog on this to see how it can help your Appraisal Leads.
Portfolio Evidence
Portfolio evidence will no longer copy across to the next appraisal by default. Users can select the evidence they want to keep by ticking the box ‘Keep Evidence for Next Appraisal’ when creating a new piece of evidence or when editing a piece of evidence. Users cannot select an expiry AND tick the ‘Keep Evidence for Next Appraisal’ box. Expiry dates are for evidence to span more than one future appraisal or if the evidence has a specific end date.
eLeave
Following feedback from users, the eLeave calendar was reduced in size making it easier to see the whole month in one go. The tabs can also now be opened or closed by clicking on the Open Filter/Close Filter button in the top right-hand corner.
Alongside our usual development work, we have also made some additional changes in response to the Covid-19 guidance.
Appraisal Exemptions and Revalidation Deferral
In March, the GMC issued guidance that appraisals should be suspended until further notice. In addition, doctors who were due to revalidate before the end of September 2020 had their revalidation date deferred for one year. We wrote some code to quickly add Appraisal Exemptions for anyone who had their appraisal due and also to update any current recommendations on SARD to match the data on GMC Connect. We’ve run the code for many of our organisations that are using SARD, but if this is something you still need for your organisation then please get in touch.
Online Patient Feedback
With more consultations taking place online, we’ve added a the ability to fill in patient feedback questionnaires electronically rather than via paper. You can read more about this here.
And work continues on new products and applications.
AHP Job Planning
We’ve build a new Non-Medical Job Planning product. It’s very similar to our medical job plans but a lot simpler and, of course, no PAs. Activities are in hours and minutes. AHP Job Planning is currently being piloted with a couple of trusts.
Compliance Reporting and Advanced Job Plan Reporting is also available for Non-Medical Job Plans.
ESR Wrapper
SARD and Oxleas NHS Trust have been working on an API wrapper to improve access to NHS Electronic Staff Record data. You can read more about this here.
Reality Checker
Our NHSI funded ‘Reality Checker’ application uses feedback from electronic patient record systems to estimate performance against job plans. This simplified approach to capacity planning has been proven in our partnering trust Oxleas. Its aim is to drive conversations that improve the quality of job plans and capacity management.
