Patient Records - NHS Lothian

Introduction

NHS Lothian provides a comprehensive range of primary, community-based and acute hospital services for the populations of Edinburgh, Midlothian, East Lothian and West Lothian – the second largest residential population in Scotland, circa 800, 000. It employs nearly 28,000 staff, including approximately 15,000 nurses and midwives and around 2,700 medical staff.

Business Challenge

An organisation's information is one of its most valuable and irreplaceable assets. It therefore needs expert management to ensure it is secure, readily available, and that its use is controlled with adequate facilities for storage put in place. There were 3 key business issues which NHS Lothian faced:

•The escalating problem of document storage and protection. Up until this point over 5m patient records were being stored by the board (equivalent to 32 km of shelf space) resulting in significant cost and security implications.
•Risks and delays associated with the manual transfer of paper copies i.e. risk of errors and lost information. It is crucial that Information is accurate and readily available for use by the right people in order to deliver an efficient service to patients.
•Overall drive to reduce internal costs, facilities and storage costs for holding the information.

Solution

The solution involves four hospital locations, Western General Hospital, Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and St John’s Hospital and patient records for the 800,000 strong population.

Northgate implemented its Document Management Solution and Storage Solutions from the Store product range and worked in partnership with a leading provider of business process optimisation services to deliver the document management solution. The Patient Record Management system brings together documents and information of different formats so that all data can be uploaded back into a Corporate Content Management application. The solution digitally records the clinical records of all existing and new patients.

The average patient record comprises approximately 220 separate pieces of paper and therefore storage requirements for this volume of paper are huge. By implementing the electronic storage solution, over a period of time NHS Lothian will benefit from considerable cost savings.

The system ensures all data relating to the individual’s health is readily available via the new secure system, from x-ray reports and prescription records to GP referral letters and consultant discharge summaries. In addition to providing a more immediate overview of an individual’s clinical history, the software application also indexes each document to improve speed of access for future referencing.

The solution, which is able to process around 30, 000 documents per day across the four hospital locations is also unique as it electronically transfers all scanned information straight to NHS Scotland’s centralised data storage facility – SCI Store (each NHS board in Scotland has its own instance of a nationally developed data repository called Scottish Care Information Store) – offering further data protection benefits, and eliminating the risks and delays associated with the manual transfer of paper copies. This is the first system to be implemented which electronically transfers patient data straight to the centralised NHS database making management of the data much more efficient and secure.

Key Results

For NHS Lothian, Northgate's Document Management solution will significantly reduce the physical storage previously required. Once information has been scanned into the Electronic Document Management System (EDRMS), storage facilities can be significantly reduced or eliminated, therefore reducing costs.

Access control will significantly improve security levels by restricting user access to sensitive documents via a number of methods e.g. document type, user group, security level etc.

Staff productivity will increase as less time is spent retrieving documents. Additionally the quality and reliability of information is significantly higher while risks in lost information reduced.

Overall NHS Lothian will benefit from considerable cost savings and efficiency gains. In addition the security of information will improve considerably. All of these improvements work towards delivering key improvements in patient care and the service provided. This also helps to address the patient-centred structure and integrated approach the Board is aiming for.

Key Benefits

•Reduced costs
•Improved security
•Improved efficiency
•Increased staff productivity
•Improved customer service
 

Martin Egan, NHS Lothian's Director of eHealth:

"This new technology will dramatically impact on our administration processes. Cost savings and efficiencies will be delivered by significantly reducing the amount of man-hours spent manually lodging and recording data. Added to that, the enhanced data security and support services give us a level of protection which is critical to the running of our entire operations."