Partnership approach to recording, reviewing and reporting on Drug and Alcohol-related Deaths
Summary
The QES Drug and Alcohol related Death Review and Surveillance System enables multi-agency collaboration to understand, derive lessons from, and implement action to address and reduce drug and alcohol related deaths. The range of information inputted into the system by multi-agency partners at a local level (i.e. police, ambulance, drug and alcohol service providers) facilitates the tying together of a series of small details to provide one comprehensive view of circumstances surrounding a drug or alcohol related death.
This collection of real-time information from partners is essential in the ability to learn from, and react to, emerging patterns and trends in substance misuse. This ultimately delivers a significant opportunity to identify risk factor groups and demographics and input targeted resource and activity on local, regional and national levels. The DARD Review System brings together both surveillance and reporting functionality with case management features to ensure lessons can be turned into action, and the review process can be followed from start to finish securely within the system.
The QES system offers a considerable time-saving element in the process of reviewing drug or alcohol related deaths. Using an electronic system enables time resource to be allocated elsewhere to implement actions and pull out vital lessons and recommendations, whilst the system takes on the administration of distributing forms, chasing partners, notifying of updates, consolidating chronologies of events and much more. An additional benefit of using an electronic system is the security of sensitive data. QES have extensive experience in providing both health and safeguarding solutions with reliable and robust security to protect data.
Finally, this system can also link to other existing QES systems such as those that monitor, record and report on unexpected deaths including suspected suicides, homeless mortalities and more. This provides users with the ability to connect linked cases, share learning and monitor links among substance misuse, mental health and circumstantial factors such as homelessness. The standardisation of collecting data across other unexpected/sudden deaths acts as an additional advantage as this reporting can go on to provide a wider view of risk factors and common themes
Features Overview
Below is a brief overview of some of the Case Review features:
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An easy to navigate, intuitive system including user-friendly interface, compatibility across multiple devices, locally configured user permissions, duplication checks and more
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Submission, sudden death and enquiry forms are securely completed by multi-agency partners on the system, and determine the demographics, characteristics and personal circumstances of an individual to facilitate learning and implement changes to address substance misuse and reduce drug or alcohol related deaths
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Automatic consolidation of Chronologies combines all multi-agency input to produce a comprehensive, chronologically ordered view of agency involvement and contact in one centralised location allowing in-depth analysis to take place
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Automatic notifications are triggered throughout the process; local authority users receive daily alerts notifying of new submissions, and alerts are sent to multi-agency partners requesting they complete their enquiry forms detailing their involvement with the individual, or the knowledge they have on that individual to build a bigger picture of their life and circumstances
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Case Management features support the end-to-end case management, taking that learning one step further and using it to inform activity. Case management features include action tracking to assign actions to users and monitor their progress, meeting management to organise meetings, invite users, upload supporting documentation and showcase minutes and actions as a result of the meeting, chronologies highlighting a timeline of events automatically filtered into chronological order and lessons, recommendations & themes to be assigned to a case
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Coronial Role within the system enables the coroner to be involved in the process with a section of the system they can access to document findings from the investigation, submit toxicology reports and upload the key details of the final death conclusion and death certificate
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Interactive reporting dashboard provides instant access to extensive real-time data including heat and marker maps for location, pie and bar charts for demographics that go far beyond gender and age (i.e. marital status, employment status, LGBTQ+ community, ethnicity, substance misuse and much more). The reporting also includes year on year comparison reports and a full extract report for additional reporting requirements. This enables local authorities to identify, and react to, emerging trends and patterns instantly
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Secure and GDPR compliant with two-factor authentication code, no sensitive data leaving the system, and multiple user roles ensuring information is only seen by those with granted access permissions
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