The objective behind deploying the Hub was to meet the requirement to send discharge letters to GPs within 72 hours and to go paper-light with clinical correspondence.
Thomas Horton, GP Liaison Manager, Royal Free NHS Foundation Trust “Feedback from practices is that they love the Hub and want to receive everything through this way. The next phase of the project will be to increase the range of clinical correspondence we send through the Hub. The time taken for delivery can make a considerable difference, until the GP receives the letter; patient care is effectively put on hold.”
“The obvious benefits are that the Hub removes the need to print letters and documents are delivered within a good time frame. Our aim is to get as many practices connected to the Hub as possible and to deliver many more documents through it.”
PCTI’s Docman Hub is currently used by over 90 NHS Trusts to integrate with multiple IT systems to deliver documents electronically to practices. The solution enables the Trust to record proof of delivery, where a paper based system there is no audit trail. Practices can easily reject documents and remove many processes associated with manually handling and filing documents.
EDT is able to collect from multiple message streams enabling practices to receive from multiple document sources in the same Trust or from neighbouring Trusts. No matter how many streams a practice collects from, all documents can be delivered to Docman. This is convenient both in practical terms for the clinician and from an audit/clinical governance point of view. Practices report a significant time saving of up to 50 seconds per letter, by removing the need to manually file the document. Letters are received with attached meta-data containing the patient name, address, NHS number, date, department and registered GP practice, to ensure data quality.
Ric Thompson, Managing Director, PCTI “there has been a fantastic response to Docman Hub over the past two years, with many Trusts initially deploying the Hub to meet their 24 hour discharge summary target. After seeing the benefits to the Trust, staff, practices and patients channeling all clinical correspondence through the Hub achieves significant efficiency savings and quality improvements.”
“Docman Hub now extends this functionality to allow for two way document transfer, so any care setting can send and receive letters electronically through a Hub.”