Current Filter: Document>>>>>News>

   

To save money through the closure of its large off-campus records library whilst enhancing patient care through clinical and operational efficiency, Basildon and Thurrock University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has completed deployment of a trust-wide electronic medical records (EMR) system in a project costing a total of £6.5 million. This has seen 450,000 patient case notes digitized – around 54 million pages - with all departments now ‘live’.

Phil Burke, the trust’s EMR programme manager, says, “The main thing was to install a system and scan the medical notes without disrupting the running of the hospital. The shift from paper to electronic records is a huge business change initiative. It’s not just a case of introducing IT and scanning. Our transformation team has had to understand the intricacies of each medical specialty and how they interact with the notes given the patient flows around the hospital. Our system has then been designed from the ground up to meet our specific needs given there was no off-the-shelf solution that met our requirements when we first started evaluating solutions towards the end of 2009.”

The new EMR solution comprises various components including Mobius medical records software from Fortrus, Laserfiche’s EDMS, Adobe Livecycle workflow and eforms technology, with the actual notes scanned using both Kodak production scanners and ibml ImageTrac Lite equipment.

EASIER WORKING WITH CLEAR ROI TO BE REALISED
In close collaboration with its advisory group of 14 clinicians, the EMR project team defined around 50 key [medical] document types and is using a combination of bar codes, OCR and manual input to recognise, index and date documents so that they are presented in the context of each patient episode. The EMR is also split into chapters such as correspondence, nursing, observations, investigations and so on.

Ian Linehan, lead clinician on the EMR project, says, “The big issues we have solved are first implementing a system so that historical patient information is accessible and usable, and second managing the change process carefully. We have made the records more accessible by dating and indexing documents to avoid the clinician seeing information presented in an unstructured way. System acceptance has been achieved by involving staff, avoiding a ‘big bang’ roll out, testing it in restricted areas to address any issues and adding value by incorporating other benefits where we can. So, when you look at the EMR, you get immediate access to bloods, pathology and X-ray reports without having to revert to other IT systems.”

The Trust expects to realise significant ROI by the closure of its medical records library – located three miles away from the hospital campus at Sovereign Park - which it doesn’t own, thereby saving on leasing, general overhead and transport costs.

Burke adds, “By closing the leased record library and the associated health record staff savings, we are already seeing a significant return on our investment. However the business case doesn’t fully reflect the cost of doing nothing. Our patient records are expanding by 20 per cent annually with new material relating to attendances. If we had not started scanning back in 2010, by now we would have outgrown our record library and would have needed to move to much larger accommodation. Our next major challenge is to move from paper lite to paperless across the Trust by enabling the direct input of patient data into our EMR.”

Page   1  2