Herefordshire plan to expand their Hub to reach 250,000 patients

April 30, 2012 - PRLog -- Herefordshire plan to expand their Hub to reach 250,000 patients

NHS Herefordshire in 2008 deployed PCTI’s electronic document transfer Hub to deliver patient letters to 24 GP practices. Initially the project went live sending electronic discharge summaries and electronic radiology reports.

The next phase of the project is to connect their digital dictation to the Hub to maximise the use of the software across departments and to take a further step to paper-free efficiencies. The Trust now aims to connect a further 76 practices in the wider area to the Hub, meaning an additional 70,000 patients could benefit from a faster communication process between the hospital and their GP. The EDT Hub is currently delivering to GP practices covering 180,000 patients.

Steven Fortey, Application Development Team Leader, Hoople Ltd who provide IT Services to Herefordshire Council, Wye Valley NHS Trust & Herefordshire PCT “the previous paper method of sending documents would take up to a week to reach the GP practice, now documents are there within 24 hours.  The estimated costs of the paper transfer were high, costing around 80 pence for each letter.  It is the time savings and streamlining of processes that is really making the difference for us.”

“We are always looking at ways technology can improve processes and streamline patient care pathways. There are a few projects that we plan to integrate over the next few months, such as Maternity birth notifications, CDU Documents (Clinical Decision Unit) and A&E admission related documents.”

“Our next aim is to review the EDT Hub two-way document transfer facility so that communication is streamlined and we can communicate efficiently to reduce the length of stays in the hospital by having the right information and the right people in place when needed. The aim is to put as much as we can through the Hub because the majority of our GPs want to send information to us electronically. We are also looking at the use of Docman RMS in the Trust to manage these incoming letters.”

Tim Robinson, Sales and Marketing Manager, PCTI “We are constantly adding new technologies and working with Trusts to help them realise true paper-free health care. There is no doubt it is important to remove the paper trail, but it is the delivery of key information to clinicians faster than before that will really make a difference to patient care. In result of this aim we are constantly working to refine our software to maximise automation processes where possible, so that a task that takes a few seconds for each letter is removed. When this time saving is then extrapolated, it makes a considerable difference to a health professional’s working day.”

PCTI’s EDT Hub solution connects with many secondary systems for over 50 Trusts to send documents electronically to GPs. The solution transfers all letters over the NHS secure network straight into Docman’s electronic workflow, where healthcare professionals can use automation tools to gain faster access to critical patient information, ultimately increasing the whole patient experience. The practice uses the intelligent tools within Docman to quickly process letters, saving hours of time compared to manual processing.”