‘With the knowledge base, I can reassure patients immediately’
Brian Kerssemeijer, 38, is a practising GP in Bemmel. Together with three colleagues, he runs a well-oiled practice in the urbanised countryside between Arnhem and Nijmegen. For about a year and a half, Brian has been using the innovative consultation platform Prisma.
‘A colleague of mine mentioned something he had read on Prisma. To which I thought: Prisma, what is that? I was invited to join and first went to have a look to see what was happening on Prisma and what can be found there. I immediately found the search function in the knowledge base very useful, to look up targeted information on certain cases.’
Efficient
‘It’s easy to quickly find a lot of things. Because when submitting a teleconsult, I regularly wondered how many times specialists had already answered this question before. It’s very smart that all that knowledge now remains available to other GPs, so questions don’t have to be answered twice. That makes working with Prisma efficient.
‘I even sometimes use the knowledge base directly when sitting across from a patient. If I find the answer, I can immediately reassure the patient. People respond very well to that, because they like the idea that the answer comes from a specialist.’
Multidisciplinary or specialty unknown?
‘Personally, I find that Prisma is preferable for questions that are multidisciplinary or for those where I don’t know which specialism they best fit,’ says Brian. ‘In contrast, I use a regular teleconsult when a patient has a very specific question, which is already known in the hospital, for example. Or if the specialism is already obvious and the patient probably needs to be referred, I sometimes prefer to contact a colleague from the region. I then use VIPLive or ZorgDomein.’
Quick answer
‘If I want a quick answer, it’s tempting to use Prisma, instead of the regular teleconsult, because Prisma is quite fast,’ says Brian. ‘Within a few hours you often have an answer to your question. Besides, it is nice that it is not time-bound. I can do it at the end of the day. Or, if something else comes to mind on the way home, at home in the evening.’
Complicated casuistry
‘Especially complicated case histories that don’t occur often, I find particularly interesting to read along,’ Brian says. ‘But also, for example, the cases where fellow GPs send photos along. I enjoy thinking along with them what it could be and then seeing the specialists’ answers. Sometimes you also see that specialists don’t know the answer to a question and that a patient simply doesn’t belong in primary care, but would be better referred.’
‘For example, a man once came to me who had been diagnosed with joint pain in hospital. These would in fact occur as a side effect of a medicine. Over time, the complaints would subside, but they did not. He even developed other complaints on top of it,’ Brian says. ‘I posted the case in Prisma asking: does this picture fit with this diagnosis or is there more to it? Then I was advised to have an ultrasound of the tendons anyway and to refer to the rheumatologist. In the end, it turned out that it was a rheumatic condition after all.’
Prisma in the region
Although the practice falls under the Arnhem region, because of its location, about half of the patients go to the hospital in Nijmegen. This ensures that we work here with two forms of regular teleconsultation: in Arnhem they use VIPLive and in Nijmegen Zorgdomein. Prisma is a nice addition to that.
‘The fact that specialists from multiple disciplines respond is the main reason for me to be active on Prisma. Prisma is user-friendly and I use it easily from my phone. If in the future there will also be a direct link with HIS, that would be really great!
Prisma is currently only available for GPs, specialists and RGPOs that are based in the Netherlands.