Several GP Practices of Lancashire North CCG and University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust has chosen Docman Hub to send patient letters electronically to GP Practices. The Trust deployed the solution in November 2013 and within two months was live delivering clinical correspondence electronically to local practices.
David Slater, UHMBT Project Manager and Lancashire North CCG Programme Manager “Docman is being used by the University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay and Lancashire North CCG as a fast and efficient process for sending electronic documents to GP practices thereby improving patient care.”
Gill Longhurst, Systems Analyst/Developer, UHMBT “We are currently live sending Discharge Summaries and A&E letters electronically to GP Practices and now aim to send even more correspondence this way with a further 6 sources identified. We went live very quickly with the solution thanks to the joined-up approach of stakeholders across Lancashire North CCG and the support from Docman.”
In February the Trust was sending over 3,300 letters electronically to GP Practices.
David continues “We have a really close and strong working relationship between the Trust, Practices and the CCG to really support and drive projects. The relationship helped to ensure we quickly went live with the project and started to see the benefits. It is vital for any project to have the buy-in from all stakeholders and to have GP engagement before any project starts. We did a pilot with a GP practice and after immediately seeing the benefits we quickly rolled-out the solution to the other practices. We have regular IT meetings with the Trust, Practices and CCG so that we can review current IT projects and discuss future projects. A close relationship with our stakeholders really works for us. It makes the delivery of projects much easier so we can deliver the benefits quickly.”
“Practices in our area use Docman with their clinical system EMIS Web or INPS Vision. Documents delivered into Docman arrive with the attached structured meta-data to pre-populate the fields to file the document. This means the letter can quickly enter the Docman workflow and be with GPs faster than any paper method could.”
Janet Taylor, IM&T/H&S/QOF Manager, Coastal Medical Group “the Docman system works really well for us, especially because we receive over 400 letters each day. There is no need to move paper around and because we are over three sites it is really important that we are electronic in what we do. One of our team mentioned one day it took them 2 hours to open and date stamp letters received in the post. The letters we receive electronically arrive every 2 hours, whereas letters through the post are typically received a day later, but we have seen letters arrive even a week later through the post.”
University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust now aim to send even more types of patient letters electronically to GP practices to deliver information quicker to GPs.
David summarises “we are doing a piece of work in our CCG to investigate what letters are sent to practices and where they come from. By doing this we will be able to push more letters through Docman Hub and generate even greater benefits with the view to sending every letter through our Hub. This project was driven by GPs wanting information delivered directly into Docman electronically, so the more we can do the greater benefits all our stakeholders will realise.”
“The benefits to practices are significant, they include saving practice staff time, removing the time to prepare a letter and scan it. Information is delivered within 24 hours, GPs see the letter immediately and can intervene quicker than ever before; even to send a nurse out the same day. Overall we now have a real consistent and standardised process.”
Gill summarises “The solution is great, it is very stable, efficient and the fact we have gone live so quickly is just fantastic. It is a real testament to all the providers working together to deliver for our patients.”
Docman Hub is utilised by over 100 NHS Trusts to deliver clinical correspondence between care providers. Over 6,000 organisations utilise Docman to electronically manage, workflow and collaborator on over 500 million patient letters. To find out more please visit www.docman.com