InHealth is the UK’s largest independent provider of managed diagnostic services to the NHS and to independent private sector customers. A privately owned company with over 25 years’ proven experience in developing strong relationships with the public sector and delivering market leading clinical solutions, InHealth now have over 350 sites across the UK from which they deliver a variety of diagnostic services.
The Challenge
To provide the highest quality of care and service for our customers and their patients InHealth wanted to supply an end-to-end integrated diagnostic reporting delivery solution to GPs that would:
1. Not affect GP internal systems
2. Make the delivery of reports fully automated, simple and traceable
3. Increase clinical safety
4. Lead to a better patient outcome
The Solution
InHealth chose Docman – a product by Advanced – leading supplier of advanced Electronic Document Management, workflow and transfer for Primary, Secondary and Social Healthcare organisations – to enable us to deliver an automated diagnostic reporting solution. The solution integrates seamlessly with existing Practice Management Systems and with the InHealth Patient Administration System via our own Docman Connect, making the transfer of diagnostic reports as simple and reliable as possible for GPs.
“We chose Docman because it is widely used across primary and secondary care. Digitising our diagnostic report delivery reduces the risk of manual error and delay in review and filing of reports, whilst the automated solution saves time and effort in GP practices and within InHealth’s Patient Referral Centre”.
Aga continues “Docman Connect also improves our communication as we can now instantly see that a diagnostic report has been delivered and if a document has been rejected by a practice. If a report is rejected we can react quickly to resolve any issue.”
Aga Rak, IT Programme Manager, InHealth
What can Docman and InHealth offer your GP practices
Reduced Manual Administration
With no change to GP internal systems and no additional training required we found that practices could save over 7 hours/day in the manual process of managing and filing reports to the patient record, allowing for more value-add activities to focus on the patient’s care.
Fully Automated Reporting
Once the diagnostic report has been accepted there is no need to re-enter patient information – the report has already been filed directly to the patient record. This is key in alleviating the potential for human error.
Guaranteed Reports Delivery
Docman solution seamlessly sends diagnostic reports electronically and securely through the N3 network and reports arrive into the centre of a GP Practice processes making them immediately available to the GP. Fully traceable with receipt confirmation, diagnostic reports delivered via Docman are never lost and are easily accessible. Practices can reject any diagnostic reports which have issues or were not intended for them in the first place allowing for timely management of these exceptions.
Proactive Monitoring
With Docman solutions, we can see instantly that the diagnostic report has been delivered and it provides a feedback loop improving two-way communication between the practices and InHealth. The integrated system enables proactive status and SLA reporting which allows InHealth to see and react quickly to resolve any exception cases such as undelivered, not collected or rejected reports, making the exception more visible than ever – ultimately improving the customer experience.
Increased Clinical Safety
Incidents of human error are greatly reduced as there is no need to re-enter patient data and reports cannot be misplaced or attached to the wrong patient record.
“Sustained organic growth has led InHealth to reach a level of complexity that requires systems and processes that are standardised, scalable and automated wherever possible. Integrating Docman with our new Patient Management System, ‘xRM’ to create a digitised diagnostic report delivery solution contributes towards our digital strategy for connected healthcare and our business objectives of making healthcare and diagnostics better for patients.”
Steve Standring, Programme Director, InHealth
A Tried and Tested Solution
A successful pilot was carried out in collaboration with Enfield and Haringey CCGs, in selected GP Practices which allowed us to ensure the effective delivery of this end-to-end solution through rigorous testing and communication. InHealth is now planning the implementation of the solution to the wider audience within Haringey and Enfield CCGs to allow for a standardised solution to be adopted across the practices.
“Working with InHealth and Docman without fail all letters/reports are work-flowed to clinicians – we never have a backlog. Reporting accuracy has increased as reports details are read by the system which allows auto selection. We have made significant time savings as we no longer have to open, stamp and scan reports received or make so many calls to chase lost reports.
This has undoubtedly transformed the way we work and ensures that we can give the best possible service to our patients.”
Alyson Hicks, Practice Manager, White Lodge Medical Practice, NHS Enfield CCG
Ric Thompson, Managing Director of Health & Care, Advanced “Digitising the transfer of care process through Docman provides a compelling return on investment and reduces the time professionals spend manually handling information through the process. We encourage any provider, federation, CCG or Acute Trust to get in touch with us to talk about how we can support the digital transfer of care locally and nationally. ”
Join our Webinars
We have a series of informative On Demand Webinars available, click here to join in.