Rob Douglas, the Practice Manager and also Chairman of the South Manchester GP Federation, recently told us how Docman is used in his practice, and how it helps to create seamless document management in a ‘quick and easy’ and ‘safe and secure’ way.
Before using Docman to manage their documents, all patient letters were handled manually, creating large workloads for the Administrative Teams and GPs alike. Incoming post was managed and left for the attention of GPs in their pigeon holes. This meant there could be large time lags between receiving the letter and important patient data being filed to their records. Letters might also have been scanned and emailed to GPs, which was a disjointed and time consuming process.
The practice has used Docman for a few years now, however over the last 6 months the practice has had a ‘huge leap forward’ in how they use Docman with a change over to EMIS Web. The Administration Teams and GPs have all noticeably cut down the time they spend on paperwork, averaging to about 1 hour per day for each GP. Docman also enables all staff members to work well together as a team and as a practice, by easily sending documents between each other, sending tasks to the right person the first time and allowing them to focus on the most important thing, patient care.
Now, their document management process is highly efficient. Letters are received either electronically through Docman Hub from the surrounding Hospitals (Manchester Royal Infirmary, University Hospital of South Manchester, Pennine Acute Hospitals and The Christie NHS Foundation Trust) or in the post and instantly scanned into Docman. This allows for all documents to be dealt with on the day they are received, ensuring any actions required for patient care are carried out without delay.
Once scanned, documents are date stamped to stay organised, then forwarded on to GPs with iWorkflow. These patient documents are then highlighted by the GPs for what need to be coded, then workflowed back to the relevant member of the Administration Team to finish managing the letter, then filed away. The practice will now be going on to use Intellisense to further speed up their filing by aiding with their read coding and summarising of documents.
The Borchardt Medical Centre take levels of efficiency one step further, by using their ‘Buddy scheme’, for if any practice members are absent, their buddy will take over their document management. With the help of Docman, letters are not left unmanaged for any longer than the same day, or the next morning at the absolute latest.
Aside from benefiting the practice GPs and the Administration Team with their daily tasks, Docman also helps the Practice Manager to fulfil his duties. Rob Douglas describes Docman as a ‘great tool to monitor staff’, ensuring all documents are being dealt with properly, and so that with Docman, ‘what gets done, gets done right’.
‘Docman feels like a more natural extension to sending and workflowing documents around the practice. We receive about 120 letters a day, approximately 30% more than last year, so we can deal with them quite simply and in a timely fashion which is important. The Admin team workflows documents to GPs who highlight in Docman what needs coding, then workflow them back to the Admin team who then code the letters and file them away. iWorkflow lets us easily redirect documents if they need to be seen by a different person or actions are needed from someone else. Having documents in a constant flow helps us get stuff done more. It’s not hard to do and helps us a great deal.’
Overall, Docman has helped the practice to manage their patient documents very efficiently enabling the practice to operate seamlessly. With a mixture of keen Docman enthusiasts and relatively new employees ready to take on what Docman can offer, the management of documents within the practice will only excel further.