Some of the highlights of the year include a roll-out of Docman across South London, achieving 100% Docman coverage across Blackpool, EDT Hub used for 111 messages, EDT Hub facilitating Telehealth referrals and a Greater Manchester wide deployment of 10 EDT Hubs to deliver over 8 million electronic letters every year.
PCTI also announced Docman in all Scottish prisons and hosted a National User Conference with over 350 delegates; it’s been a busy year for PCTI!
There are now over 75 EDT Hubs enabling the efficient delivery of millions of items of electronic clinical correspondence between primary and secondary care, making EDT Hub the platform of choice by the NHS. Millions of patient clinical correspondence between secondary, primary and social care providers is now electronic, following 75 provider organisations taking PCTI’s electronic document transfer Hub.
Recently Tim Kelsey told the audience at the Healthcare Efficiency through Technology Expo that the NHS will strive to be paperless by 2015. Paper Free Care is at the heart of PCTI’s offering, providing electronic document management and transfer solutions to assist the NHS in their quest to become paperless and deliver efficiencies in line with QIPP.
A successful launch of Docman RMS has seen 3 NHS Trusts take the solution as a Trust wide electronic referral management system which manages all incoming referrals electronically, further helping to reduce paper and the associated risks of hard copy documents.
Ric Thompson, Managing Director, PCTI “2012 has been a fantastic year for PCTI, we are really proud of the projects that we have been involved with, delivering tangible outcomes for our customers. Delivering a paperless, connected health service has been spoken about for years, we are now making this a reality with over 75 NHS organisations using EDT Hub to transfer patient letters electronically and more than 5,500 practices using Docman to seamlessly workflow and manage these documents.”
“Referral management has been a key area for our business; three NHS Trusts have chosen Docman RMS to streamline the processing of referrals they received. This means from the moment the referral lands at the Trust the referral to booking time can be well within 24hours.”
“2013 is set to be an equally exciting year where we will be launching more ground breaking innovative solutions to enable the NHS to deliver on its plans!”
Below we review the key events of 2012…
January
PCTI and ReStart announced a partnership to provide professional technical services to NHS Trusts in order to help them integrate their electronic document feeds into EDT Hub.
In January we launched a Call for Proposal process for The National Docman User Conference, where we received a fantastic response from customers on their best practice stories. To read an overview of the event please click here >>
A new Docman module, BackOffice Apps, was launched to help practices prepare evidence for CQC. The solution provides a range of applications to electronically store and manage information such as fridge temperatures, accident logs, assets, significant events etc.
A Sussex Health Informatics Service study highlighted the benefits of Docman and EDT at Victoria Road Surgery. The results of the analysis showed immediate benefits such as the improvement of speed of access to information, improved information governance and data protection, improved patient experience and improved communication between secondary and primary care reducing the risk of readmission.
March
PCTI experienced a busy quarter with over 250 practices joining Docman. Amongst the practices were 5 projects that included Lewisham, Berkshire, Dudley, South West London and Heart of Birmingham.
NHS Blackpool achieved 100% coverage of Docman and took a step further to providing paper free care. 21 practices across Blackpool received Docman with Intellisense, iWorkflow and the new BackOffice modules.
“Previous systems could take practices 3-4 days to scan and attach correspondence into the patient’s clinical record. With Docman, correspondence is now scanned or delivered into the patients record within 1 working day ensuring clinicians have access to the most up to date correspondence when consulting with patients.” Louise Gore, IM&T Programme Manager, NHS Blackpool.
Geoff Dennis, Practice Manager, The Falmouth Health Centre discussed how BackOffice Apps has helped his practice become paperless. “Docman has transformed the way we work and has revolutionised the way we handle clinical documents. BackOffice Apps are now helping us to bring that same high level of quality and consistency to our other data.
April
PCTI attended HC2012, the national event for health informatics, showcasing the innovative EDT Hub and the new referral management solution, Docman RMS. RMS enables NHS Trusts to electronically manage all incoming referral letters and was showcased by King’s College NHS Foundation Trust.
NHS Scotland deployed Docman across all prisons in a contract worth over £100k over 5 years. Prior to having Docman installed, prisoners’ community records were not available within the prisons; they were managed manually, which could be problematic when prisoners were transferred.
Worcester Acute Hospital NHS Trust signed up to manage all incoming referrals with Docman RMS.
Sandra Whitelock, ICT Project Manager, Worcester Acute Hospital NHS Trust “With the Docman solution we will be able to standardise our referral management system, by creating a single repository. Our clinical reviews and authorisation of referrals will be enhanced.”
“The tracking and management of referrals will be greatly improved and this in turn, will mean that we are able to respond to patients and referrers enquiries more speedily.”
May
NHS Herefordshire deployed EDT Hub in 2008 and expanded their reach to connect to a further 76 practices, extending to an additional 70,000 patients. The Hub, which now provides electronic correspondence for over 250,000 patients, provides a faster communication process between the hospital and GPs.
350 delegates attended the National Docman User Conference 2012; and the audience were the first to preview the newly launched Docman Collaborator. The solution provides fully auditable, discussion platform specifically designed for the NHS. Marg Robinson, Data Quality & IT Manager, Sandy Lane Surgery, highlights “We had a fantastic day at the Institute of Directors and after hearing about Docman Collaborator and that it could audit discussions to the patient letters within Docman, we wanted to find out more. We previously used emails, patient notes and meetings to collaborate in our practice. Rather than passing paper around or emails that can get lost, we are really keen on Collaborator to provide a fully audited system to save a lot of time that was wasted trying to manage these processes.”
During the course of the user conference, a video crew were on hand to record the opinions of delegates at the venue; ranging from customer testimonials about Docman, EDT Hub and the event itself, to PCTI directors discussing their vision for the future of paper free care. These can be viewed here.
King’s College Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust was the first to implement the Docman Referral Management System to manage all incoming referrals. The solution provides trusts with a complete electronic document management and workflow solution for managing all referral documentation from external and internal sources. Clive Stringer, Deputy IT Manager, presented at the conference “a single point of contact for patients regarding their referrals, combined with the new electronic system, should mean that staff can deal with patient queries with all the information at their fingertips.”
June
PCTI attended Commissioning 2012 to showcase Docman, the primary care solution and the newest module, Collaborator.
The Marie Curie coast-to-coast bike ride took place on Friday 22 June and included three members of the PCTI team who helped to reach the £20,000 target.
PCTI reported on the EDT Hub at University Hospitals Birmingham. Rachel Wells, IT Project Manager working in close partnership with the South Birmingham PCT IT Dept (now the Birmingham and Solihull Cluster) initially went through a proof of concept with one practice and immediately recognised the benefits. “We agreed it was a sensible approach to roll-out EDT Hub on a practice by practice basis where Docman was already in use for manual scanning. Our EDT Hub is currently active for sending digitally dictated letters, in patient and daycase discharge letters, A&E discharge letters, and other patient correspondence to practices in the area. This enables practices, irrespective of their clinical system, to receive electronic documents from our EDT Hub.”
July
Greater Manchester announce an Electronic Clinical Correspondence project to send 5 million documents annually in a contract for up to 5 years with EDT Hub. The project included implementing 10 EDT Hubs across the Greater Manchester Community and the cost savings are expected to exceed £1,000,000 within the trusts alone.
Howard Gray, Chair of the GM ECC Programme Board said, “This is a strategic landmark for Greater Manchester, and builds on the strong partnership and collaboration we have with our NHS organisations across the region. This project will provide a higher quality service for the patient and also deliver tangible financial benefits. We see this project as the start and are excited by where we can take this in the future.”
PCTI announced that EDT Hub’s two-way document transfer functionality will be used with a Telehealth service in Worcestershire.
August
A Docman practice was interviewed by Practice Business; “Over the past 4 years the practice has seen an increase in incoming paperwork of 75%. Thanks to the changes we made we have been able to process this without any extra investment in staff admin time.” Dave Mills, Patient Services & IT Manager, Dr Anscombe & Partners.
PCTI’s Clinical Director, Dr Glyn Hayes discussed the power of information driving better healthcare. In an article which was featured on established GP news site GPOnline, Dr Hayes discussed the future of the NHS and the great need to make measurable time and cost savings; which can be achieved by implementing Docman and EDT Hub.
September
PCTI announced the date for the annual National Docman User Conference 2013. Building on the success of 2012, PCTI decided to hold the event at the Institute of Directors for a second time, returning on 16 May 2013.
Docman was shortlisted in the General Practice awards 2012, for significant contributions to efficiency savings across General Practice.
October
Following on from the CSC announcement, PCTI announced their commitment to support iSoft practices during times of change. PCTI promised that there would be no training required and no extra charges to practices keeping their Docman software when moving clinical systems.
NHS Oxfordshire utilised EDT Hub to send 111 messages to GP practices; Úna Rice, Project Manager, Informatics Strategy and Programmes, NHS Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Cluster “We chose to use the EDT Hub for the 111 service as it was already central to our transfer of information strategy in Oxfordshire. Our practices were already using it to receive discharge and A&E summaries from the Oxford University Hospitals Trust so the infrastructure was already in place and in use. We wanted 111 messaging to fit in with that strategy.”
November
PCTI attended EHI Live 2012 where Clive Stringer and Steve Groves from King’s College Hospital NHS Trust presented as part of the Best Practice Showcase on their Docman RMS project. Over 70 delegates attended the presentation where Steve Groves commented “with the old process, a referral could be in the system for a week or more. With Docman, we can actually turn it around in one day!”
Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust increased the number of electronic documents they sent using EDT Hub. Largely used for transferring inpatient discharge summaries, the trust is now expanding the range of clinical correspondence that it sends to considerably reduce delivery times and improve patient care.
Central Surrey Health reported on their EDT Hub with RiO, noting savings of over £35,000 annually in reduced paper and postage costs together with over 3000 hours of processing time within its services and at the GP practices.
PCTI released a number of animations highlighting the benefits of the newest solutions; BackOffice Library, BackOffice Apps, Docman Collaborator and Docman RMS.
December
Practices found innovative ways to use Docman Collaborator to streamline referral vetting processes in practices. Implementing a referral vetting process can reduce referrals by 30% and improve quality. (The King’s Fund1)
PCTI announced EDT Hub is to be used by a private hospital group.
EDT Hub delivers millions of patient letters electronically to GPs, with Tayside alone sending over 1million documents since going live.
Dr Beena Raschkes, GP & Joint Clinical IT Lead NHS Tayside “EDT has made a huge difference. Letters arrive promptly, are legible, complete , clear, concise, contain much more useful information, do not get lost either in the hospital or the practice , and most importantly it had radically improved patient care and communication about the patient and the care they have received and need and medication changes ”
“The most powerful example was an elderly lady being discharged home with multiple medications. Her Daughter very concerned as mother had a poor memory, and needed a prompt to take medication. The discharge letter was sent through EDT at lunchtime, I spoke to the daughter later that afternoon, rationalised her medication, issued script, pharmacy collected it that afternoon and the drugs were delivered the next morning. With the old paper discharge letter we probably would never have received it , and it would still be in her handbag, on her mantelpiece!”
A third NHS Trust signs up for Docman RMS.
Latham House Medical Centre recently quoted “We would definitely recommend Docman to another practice, the system is extremely user friendly, the customer service is great and the system is the best on the market.” In the year we have published a variety of case studies of Docman practices here highlighting the innovative ways practices use the solution to save time.
Reference
(https://www.ehi.co.uk/news/ehi/8113/nhs-to-be-‘paperless’-by-2015—kelsey)