Case 2
PATIENT’S SYSEM FOR MENTAL HEALTH CARE
This is a system that maintains information about patients suffering from
mental health problems and the treatments they receive.
Most mental health patients do not require dedicated hospital treatment but need to attend
specialist clinics regularly where they can meet a doctor who has detailed knowledge of their
problems. To make it easy for the patients to attend, these clinics are not just run in hospitals
but are also run at local medical practices, and community centres.
The System
The Mental Health Care-Patient Management System (MHC-PMS) is a system intended for
use at the various mental clinics. It make use of a centralised database of patients information
but has also been designed to run on a PC, so that it may be accessed and used from sites that
do not have secure network connectivity. When the local systems have secure network
access, users use patient information in the database but they can download and use local
copies of patient records when they are disconnected. The system is not a complete medical
records system so does not maintain information about other medical conditions. However, it
may interact and exchange data with other clinical systems.
The figure below illustrates the organisation of the MHC-PMS.
The system generate management information that allows health service managers to assess
performance against local and government targets and also provides medical staff with timely
and accurate information to support the treatment of patient.
The nature of mental health problems is such that patients are often disorganised and hence
may;
1. Miss their appointments
2. Lose their prescriptions deliberately or accidentally
3. Miss taking their medications deliberately or accidentally
4. Deliberately or accidentally forget to follow instructions
5. Intentionally make unreasonable demands on medical staff, and
6. Drop in at clinics unexpectedly
In minority of cases, they may be a danger to themselves or to other people.
MHC-
PMS
Local
MHC-
PMS
Local
MHC-
PMS
Local
MHC-
PMS
Server
MHC-
PMS
Server
