Greyfriars Surgery, Hereford

Greyfriars surgery is a busy Practice in Hereford, which has been part of Herefordshire PCT’s project to deploy a document management solution for the delivery of electronic discharge messaging and  the delivery of electronic radiology report messaging direct to GP practices.

Greyfriars Surgery were provided with Docman 7, which enables the Practice to manage its paper and electronic documents in a secure environment, with controlled access from its clinical system. Documents are stored and tagged with criteria such as description, hospital, departments, consultant and keywords. Each may be secured using passwords and user security and further categorised into document folders. Documents may be workflowed around the practice to individuals or groups of users, the users can then highlight, stamp and comment on the document enabling group discussion or to simply action.

In addition the practice also use the Docman EDT module which handles the transmission and receipt of electronic documents and reports. These are sent from the EDT Server at the Herefordshire Hospital Trust (HHT), which is fed by both the radiology and e-discharge systems.

These EDT documents include ‘meta-data’ so that they are auto-matched to the correct patient and the filing details completed. This allows documents to be filed rapidly into Docman and the GP clinical record with minimal user intervention, whilst reducing the potential for errors. Once filed the documents can then be work-flowed around the practice in the usual way.

Marcia on docman, “Hospital letters and patient letters previously had to be opened, stamped and then given to appropriate GPs for reading. They would then highlight and put back in a coding tray for admin to code into patient, overall being a time consuming process. However using the Docman solution clinical letters/ admin patient letters are now opened, date stamped and put into a scanning tray, scanned within 24hr period into Docman. Documents are then work-flowed to appropriate clinical staff, who then read and highlight electronically, and indentify any coding needed. The document is then work-flowed back to admin staff for action/coding and any messages for patients are put in as comments. The original document is saved for one month before shredding.”

Marcia further highlights the benefits, “We have realised many benefits from the PCTI solution; there is now a lot less paper passed around the Practice, and there is now no instance of any lost or mislaid clinical letters. Our Practice has benefitted greatly, as there is no manual filing, resulting in less storage of paper, all from a safe robust system.”

Marcia highlights how Docman EDT has benefitted the Practice: “Letters can now be received electronically with no need to scan them in; the documents can arrive straight into Docman for comments, and put into action. We have seen an improvement in the service to our patients as it has made it easy to view comments and results from our clinical system, to give the patient improved information and within a faster time scale. We have found Docman EDT simple, quick and easy in our Practice, sometimes we have a duplicate paper copy which needs a double check but other than this it has been greatly received”.

Greyfriars are looking forward to receiving more documents electronically through Docman EDT and taking further steps to reducing paper. Herefordshire Trust is intending to extend EDT for sending general clinic correspondence and over time aims to send all documents electronically using EDT.