Putting patient care first
North West Anglia NHS Foundation Trust runs five busy hospitals and serves a growing community of 700,000 residents, supported by 6,550 staff and volunteers at six sites.
The Trust is focused on providing safe, effective and high-quality care while enabling closer-to-home patient treatment. Meeting these daily challenges relies on the efficient management of information.
“When a patient visits hospital we create an event pack, which moves between various specialists and departments,” explains Deborah Dearden, Assistant General Manager of Health Records and Outpatient Administration. “We’re also required to retain legacy medical files and corporate material, such as financial and pharmacy-related documents.”
Leaving nothing to chance
To begin the move from physical to digital records, the Trust introduced a scanning solution. “We needed a supplier who understands our processes and what’s involved in managing case notes,” Deborah said. “Previously one in every ten images was lost due to software error. We had no option but to go back to manually retrieving paper files, putting massive pressure on already overstretched resources.”
The Trust consulted Iron Mountain®. “We got a detailed schedule setting out how Iron Mountain would work with us to redesign, test and relaunch digital scanning,” Deborah adds. “That was reassuring and exactly what we needed.”
Solid foundation for digital healthcare
Developed with the Trust stakeholders and end users, the Iron Mountain solution combines secure offsite records storage with efficient scanning. Now, every time a patient visits hospital, an event pack is created at the hospital and sent to Iron Mountain. The documents are scanned and returned as digital images usually within 24 hours. Legacy patient files are scanned on-demand. The service is delivered by a dedicated Iron Mountain team, backed by weekly update calls and monthly meetings to review service levels.
Before, keeping up with an ever-growing paper records library used to be tough. The Trust’s staff could spend several days hunting for a specific file or chasing down departments. There was a risk that records could get mislaid or lost, resulting in a patient’s appointment or operation having to be cancelled. Thankfully, those days are long gone.
