In May 2025, we launched a 16-week pilot in Bury to improve how we plan and manage the care of people with serious mental illness.

In line with national guidelines and standards, we’re introducing patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) and patient reported experience measures (PREMs).

New patients will be sent a simple online form before appointments. They’ll answer 11 questions asking them to rate their health and wellbeing, quality of life, the effectiveness of treatment and their experience of care. When answering the questions for the first time, patients will be encouraged to do it jointly with their key worker. 

We’re also piloting a new digital care planning tool, called DIALOG+, which is aligned to Paris, our electronic patient information system. It’ll allow the patient’s key worker to use their responses to create a collaborative, personalised and recovery-focused care and safety plan which will be discussed during their appointment. 

The process will be repeated at various points throughout their treatment and at the end, allowing the clinician to measure their experience of care and recovery progress and make timely changes to meet their needs.  

The pilot will be trialled with new patients referred to Bury community mental health teams (adults and older people) Bury early intervention team, Bury living well service, Bury secondary care psychology services and our trustwide community rehabilitation team.

From September 2025, we’ll introduce a digitised version of the PROMs and PREMs, using a new patient experience portal (PEP) called DrDoctor. This will be trialled across community and outpatient services in Bury.  

Patients can use an app on their smartphone, tablet or computer/laptop to complete their questions and their responses will flow into Paris. They can also easily access their care and safety plans and to see their past scores. 

DrDoctor offers clinicians a simple dashboard to review the patient’s responses and update the patient’s care and safety plans.

Investment in DrDoctor was possible thanks to £705k funding we received earlier this year from NHS England. 

The wider capabilities of DrDoctor means lots of our services will also use it for appointment reminders, patient letters and other online forms. 

Historically our community services have used a clinican-led care programme approach. This involves a key worker planning and overseeing the care of several patients at one time. A review is usually done every six or twelve months.

There are lots of benefits to the care programme approach, but a fresh approach was needed to ensure care is personalised, high quality, more flexible and better meets people’s needs. This will be achieved through being led by the patient and focusing on what’s most important to them.

Benefits include:

  1. Instead of people's care being led by a clinician, the person is in charge! Their care plan will be based on what’s important to them.
  2. Better consistency when patients are being supported by more than one service or moving to a different service.
  3. Better quality of care and experience
  4. More flexibility, as the patient's key worker can easily see how their recovery is progressing and make regular tweaks to better meet their needs.
  5. People will have easier access to their care and safety plan, via the DrDoctor patient engagement portal. People's carers and wider support network can also view these plans if the patient wants them to.
  6. People's feedback about their experience and treatment will help us continue to make positive changes
  7. It’ll help inform our decision making, reduce admin time, help us be more productive, improve how we plan and deliver services and reduce waiting times.

If you’re an existing patient, please speak to your key worker if you have any questions.

Click here for an online version of our DIALOG+ patient information leaflet.

If you'd like a printed copy, please speak to your key worker.