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Right Decision Service newsletter: September 2024

Welcome to the Right Decision Service (RDS) newsletter for September 2024.

1.Business case for permanent provision of the Right Decision Service from April 2025 onwards

This business case has now been endorsed by the HIS Board and will shortly be submitted to Scottish Government.

2. Management of RDS support tickets

To balance increasing demand with available capacity and financial resource, the RDS team and Tactuum are now working together to  implement closer management of support tickets. As a key part of this, we want to ensure clear, timely and consistent communication with yourselves as requesters.  

Editors will now start seeing new messages come through in response to support ticket requests which reflect this tightening up and improvement of our processes.

Key points to note are:

2.1 Issues confirmed by the RDS and Tactuum teams as meeting the critical/urgent and high priority criteria will continue to be prioritised and dealt with immediately.

Critical/urgent issues are defined as:

  1. The Service as a whole is not operational for multiple users. OR
  2. Multiple core functions of the Service are not operational for multiple users.

Example – RDS website outage.

Please remember to email ann.wales3@nhs.scot and his.decisionsupport@nhs.scot with any critical/urgent issues in addition to raising a support ticket.

High priority issues are defined as:

  1. A single core function of the Service is not operational for multiple users. OR:
  2. Multiple non-core functions of the Service are not operational for multiple users.

Example – Build to app not working.

2.2 Support requests that are outwith the warranty period of 12 weeks since the software was originally developed will not be automatically addressed by Tactuum. The RDS team will consider these requests for costed development work and will obtain estimate of effort and cost from Tactuum for priority issues.

2.3 Support tickets for technical issues that are not classified as bugs will not be automatically addressed by Tactuum. The definition of a bug is ‘a defect in the software that is at variance with documented user requirements.’  Issues that are not bugs will also be considered for costed development work.

The majority of issues currently in support tickets fall into category 2 or 3 above, or both.

2.4 Non-urgent requests that require a deployment (i.e a new release of RDS) will normally be factored into the next scheduled release (currently end of Nov 2024 and end of Feb 2025) unless by special agreement with the RDS team.

Please note that we plan to move in the new year to a new system whereby requests all come to an RDS support portal in the first instance and are triaged from there to Tactuum when appropriate.

We will be organising a webinar in a few weeks’ time to take you through the details of the current support processes and criteria.

3. Next scheduled deployment.

The next scheduled RDS deployment will take place at the end of November 2024.  We are reviewing all outstanding support tickets and feature requests along with estimates of effort and cost to determine which items will be included in this deployment.

We will update you on this in the next newsletter and in the planned webinar about support ticket processes.

4. Contingency arrangements for RDS

Many thanks to those of you who attended our recent webinar on the contingency arrangements being put in place to prevent future RDS outages as far as possible and minimise impact if they do occur.  Please contact ann.wales3@nhs.scot if you would like a copy of the slides from this session.

5. Transfer of CKP pathways to RDS

The NES clinical knowledge pathway (CKP) publisher is now retired and the majority of pathways supported by this tool have been transferred to the RDS. Examples include:

NHS Lothian musculoskeletal pathways

NHS Fife rehabilitation musculoskeletal pathways

NHS Tayside paediatric pathways

6. Other new RDS toolkits

Include:

Focus on frailty (from HIS Frailty improvement programme)

NHS GGC Money advice and support

If you would like to promote one of your new toolkits through this newsletter, please contact ann.wales3@nhs.scot

To go live imminently:

  • Focus on dementia
  • NHS Lothian infectious diseases toolkit
  • Dumfries and Galloway Adult Support and Protection procedures
  • SIGN guideline – Prevention and remission of type 2 diabetes

 

7. Evaluation projects

We have recently analysed the results of a survey of users of the Scottish Palliative Care Guidelines toolkit.  Key findings from 61 respondents include:

  • Most respondents (64%) are frequent users of the toolkit, using it either daily or weekly. A further 25% use it once or twice per month.
  • 5% of respondents use the toolkit to deliver direct patient care and 82% use it for learning
  • Impact on practice and decision-making was rated as very high, with 80% of respondents rating these at a 4-5 on a 5 point scale.
  • Impact on time saving was also high, with 74% of respondents rating it from 3-5.
  • 74% also reported that the toolkit improved their knowledge and skills, rating these at 4-5 on the Likert scale

Key strengths identified included:

  • The information is useful, succinct, and easy to understand (31%).
  • Coverage is comprehensive (15%)
  • All information is readily accessible in one place and users value the offline access via mobile app (15%)
  • Information is reliable, evidence-based and up to date (13%)

Users highlighted key areas for improvement in terms of navigation and search functionality. The survey was very valuable in enabling us to uncover the specific issues affecting the user experience. Many of these can be addressed through content management approaches. The issues identified with search results echo other user feedback, and we are costing improvements with a view to implementation in the next RDS deployment.

8.RDS High risk prescribing (polypharmacy) decision support embedded in Vision and EMIS primary care E H R systems

This decision support software, sponsored by Scottish Government Effective Prescribing and Therapeutics Division,  is now available for all primary care clinicians across NHS Tayside. Board-wide implementation is also planned for NHS Lothian, and NHS GGC, NHS Ayrshire and Arran and NHS Dumfries and Galloway have initial pilots in progress. The University of Dundee has been commissioned to evaluate impact of this decision support software on prescribing practice.

9. Video tutorials for RDS editors

Ten bite-size (5 mins or less) video tutorials for RDS editors are now available in the “Resources for providers of RDS tools” section of the RDS.  These cover core functionality including Save and preview, content page and media management, password management and much more.

10. Training sessions for new editors (also serve as refresher sessions for existing editors) will take place on the following dates:

  • Wednesday 23rd October 4-5 pm
  • Tuesday 29th October 11 am -12 pm

To book a place, please contact Olivia.graham@nhs.scot, providing your name, organisation, job role, and level of experience with RDS editing (none, a little, moderate, extensive.)

If you have any questions about the content of this newsletter, please contact his.decisionsupport@nhs.scot  

With kind regards

 

Right Decision Service team

Healthcare Improvement Scotland

 

 

 

Clinical Frailty Scale (CFS)

The Clinical Frailty Scale (CFS) is a judgement-based frailty tool that assesses the person's illnesses, function and cognition (thinking and understanding)  to generate a frailty score ranging from 1 (very fit) to 9 (terminally ill).

Appropriate use 

  • Recognition of frailty should be part of a holistic assessment.
  • The CFS can be undertaken by any appropriately trained healthcare professional with training and support. A free 15 minute eLearning resource from Ottawa Hospital is available here.
  • The CFS is only validated for people aged ≥ 65. It should not be used in younger people, people with stable long-term disabilities (for example, cerebral palsy), learning disability or autism and an individualised assessment is recommended.
  • Be mindful of your prejudices. Just because a person is old doesn’t mean they are frail.
  • Complete the screening based on how the person’s function was two weeks prior to deterioration. This requires understanding their global function and cognition which means talking to the patient, their family members and their carers as appropriate.

1. Very fit

People who are robust, active, energetic and motivated. They tend to exercise regularly and are among the fittest for their age.

2. Fit

People who have no active diseasesymptoms but are less fit than category 1. Often, they exercise or are very active occasionally, e.g., seasonally.

3. Managing well

People whose medical problems are well controlled, even if occasionally symptomatic, but often are not regularly active beyond routine walking.

4. Living with very mild frailty

Previously “vulnerable,” this category marks early transition from complete independence. While not dependent on others for daily help, often symptoms limit activities. A common complaint is being “slowed up” and/or being tired during the day.

5. Living with mild frailty

People who often have more evident slowing, and need help with high order instrumental activities of daily living (finances, transportation, heavy housework). Typically, mild frailty progressively impairs shopping and walking outside alone, meal preparation, medications and begins to restrict light housework.

6. Living with moderate frailty

People who need help with all outside activities and with keeping house. Inside, they often have problems with stairs and need help with bathing and might need minimal assistance (cuing, standby) with dressing.

7. Living with severe frailty

Completely dependent for personal care, from whatever cause (physical or cognitive). Even so, they seem stable and not at high risk of dying (within ~6 months).

8. Living with very severe frailty

Completely dependent for personal care and approaching end of life. Typically, they could not recover even from a minor illness.

9. Terminally ill

Approaching the end of life. This category applies to people with a life expectancy <6 months, who are not otherwise living with severe frailty. (Many terminally ill people can still exercise until very close to death.)

Scoring frailty in people with dementia

The degree of frailty generally corresponds to the degree of dementia. Common symptoms in mild dementia include forgetting the details of a recent event, though still remembering the event itself, repeating the same question/story and social withdrawal.

In moderate dementia, recent memory is very impaired, even though they seemingly can remember their past life events well. They can do personal care with prompting.

In severe dementia, they cannot do personal care without help.

In very severe dementia they are often bedfast. Many are virtually mute.

Copyright and further information

Copied with permission from Dalhousie University.

Rockwood, K and Theou, O. Using the Clinical Frailty Scale in Allocating Scarce Health Care Resources. Canadian Geriatrics Journal, Volume 23, Issue 3, pages 254-259, September 2020.