Integrating RiO and Outcomes Star at Midlands Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
How a Health and Justice team integrated Justice Star to better support clinicians and patients
“As a clinician I have used the Justice Star on many occasions…It enables me to work in a systematic way and maintain focus during interactions with the service user.” – Clinician
“Outcomes Star met all information governance requirements and were able to provide comprehensive documentation quickly and easily, spanning cyber security, data privacy and clinical safety.” – Specialist Services Project Manager, MPFT
About Midlands Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
Midlands Partnership NHS Trust (MPFT) are one of the largest NHS Trusts in the UK, providing physical and mental health, learning disability and social care services. They serve a population of 1.7 million, over a core geography of 2,400 square miles, and employ approximately 12,000 members of staff.
In 2024, MPFT’s Health and Justice team began the implementation of Outcomes Star across their services. MPFT Health and Justice team are responsible for delivering a broad range of Health and Justice services across many different settings; in Police custody, courts, prison and in the community; and at various stages of the Justice Pathway.
MPFT Health and Justice team use the Access RiO EPR system – an electronic patient record system for community, mental and child health providers, widely used in NHS Trusts in the UK.
With RiO being the primary system for the Health and Justice team, integration between the two platforms across all Health and Justice services was vital for a successful Star implementation.
About the RiO and Outcomes Star integration
Outcomes Star embeds outcomes measurement and learning within relational person-centred support, making change visible, understood, and possible. There are over 50 different versions of Outcomes Star, each tailored to a specific sector or setting, and available under licence with training and a dedicated digital platform to support best practice.
The aim was to integrate Outcomes Star Online with RiO, across Health and Justice services, to assist in multiple areas such as reduce clinicians’ admin time, improve data quality, sharing, and security within the service, as well as enhance patient and clinician interaction allowing for a meaningful review.
How did the integration project work?
MPFT’s Digital team led the integration project, bringing in Project Management, Integration Development skills and capacity to collaborate closely with the practitioner teams rolling out Outcomes Star and Star training.
The MPFT Project team also worked closely with the Health and Justice clinicians, Information Governance team and Clinical Safety Officer in the Trust to complete a comprehensive Data Protection Impact Assessment and a robust Clinical Safety Report to ensure safety, security, and compliance.
With existing access to the Integration Hub within RiO, the team at MFPT set up the integration using the API endpoints available under the Outcomes Star Integration Licence.
Records for the appropriate service users by the Health and Justice team are ‘pushed’ from RIO into Outcomes Star, and completed Stars are ‘pulled’ from Outcomes Star back into RIO as both a PDF and a progress note. Clinicians can click on a record in RiO and go straight to the linked record in Outcomes Star.
MFPT also use Outcomes Star’s Single Sign On feature for Microsoft identities, meaning clinicians logged into their Microsoft account automatically and securely log into Outcomes Star Online without any additional passwords or authentication.
Learnings and feedback
The team highlighted the importance of the detailed and comprehensive documentation available for the Outcomes Star Integration Licence and API.
The end points available for Outcomes Star met the use cases for the Health and Justice team, and supported them to meet the aims of the integration:
- Reducing the hassle for clinicians of moving between two systems
- Securely sharing data so that RIO remains a ‘single point of truth.’
- Supporting clinicians to get the most out of Outcomes Star with the unique features of Outcomes Star Online – such as:
- on-screen completion
- recording multiple perspectives
- ready-made reports
- access to all published versions of Outcomes Star at no extra cost.
It was noted that Outcomes Star met all information governance requirements and were able to provide comprehensive documentation quickly and easily, spanning cyber security, data privacy and clinical safety.
One valuable insight with the design was to tailor the design so it was service specific but easily replicable to use with other clinical teams and Stars, which has led to further rollout to the rest of the Health and Justice teams and other clinical teams within MPFT without reinventing the wheel, avoiding requiring excessive resource. Keeping it simple but highly effective.
How Justice Star has supported clinicians and service users
The Outcomes Stars are designed to be used collaboratively by practitioners and service users as a framework for reflective conversations and action planning, capturing data agreed by both practitioner and service user. A clinician explains: “As a clinician this enables reflection to be focused and structured around any needs identified but also enables the service user to have a visual for their journey.”
The Star measures the change that takes place for a service user in several areas of their life and highlights the value of these areas in their daily functioning and possibly the impact that this has on their offending behaviours.
When using the Star, the practitioner and service user assess the service user’s needs together, this prevents the isolative care planning approach and maintains the aim of person-centred care. The service user bases their assessment on their knowledge and understanding of themselves promoting empowerment, and the practitioner applies their professional experience of working with others and their observations and reflections on this person’s behaviour.
The Justice Star: a Clinician's perspective
“As a clinician I have used the Justice Star on many occasions, initially it required a slight adaptation to the way I worked and the process of my assessments and contacts, but very quickly the benefit of utilising the Justice Star was evident. It enables me to work in a systematic way and maintain focus during interactions with the service user.
“It provided a guide to leading the conversation and being clear and concise with this communication. The main benefit for me using the Star was the ability to formulate a care plan, which focused on what needs were identified and that were most important to the service user, rather than a standardised non-person-centred care plan.
The final benefit for me as a clinician is the visual context to the service users journey, as areas of their life change, this is plotted in the Star and any changes whether negative or positive are visualised, full circle this then enables refocus for myself and the service user.”
Could integrating the Stars work for you?
To find out more about whether integrating the Stars could work for you, take a look at our articles below, or Get in touch with us and we’ll be happy to help with any aspect of Outcomes Star.