8th March 2023
“The encompass programme is a transformation programme which has an Epic electronic patient record at its heart. Fundamentally, it’s about changing how everyone in Health & Social Care really works to share information together, and how information is available to both staff across all of health and social care and also to patients”.
This was the message from Senior Responsible Owner, Dr Dermot Hughes as he and Programme Director, Dr Veronica Devlin reflected on the successes of 2022 and look ahead to 2023.
They are also joined by Northern Trust Social Work encompass lead, Teresa O’Donnell, who outlined the extensive work that is underway across Social Care with provider Epic. Teressa explains,
“encompass will bring significant gains for social work staff and to those who use social care services. All the patient’s records will be in one place, they’ll be accessible via just a few clicks and social workers can be freed up to spend more of their time in supporting and actually looking after the needs of people”.
The presenters went on to explain the achievements of the programme to date and outlining the 
considerable work still to be achieved prior to South Eastern Trust going live in the Autumn.
Veronica commented “that although people get very focused on the Go Live events themselves, they’re very exciting, they’re very important, but actually, it’s really just the beginning of a ten year journey effectively, where we can continuously improve how we share information and how we use that information to the benefit of patients and service users and staff in Northern Ireland.
If you missed the live lunchtime webinar and want to hear more about encompass, you can watch the recording here:
Episode 20 – encompass, the countdown to GO LIVE! – YouTube