MICROTECH Support Limited in partnership with NHS Tayside, PCTI Solutions and NHS Scotland are pleased to announce that they been shortlisted as a finalist for an E-Health Insider Awards 2013 for Best Use of IT to Support Healthcare Business Efficiency category-NHS Tayside Delivering Patient Correspondence Electronically to GPs – NHS Tayside, PCTI Solutions, Microtech Support and NHS Scotland.
NHS Scotland required a solution to transfer patient letters electronically to GP practices to streamline communication, reduce costs and improve patient care.
Microtech, along with PCTI Solutions, have assisted NHS Tayside in successfully delivering millions of patient correspondence electronically to GP practices to improve security, save time and costs and take a step to delivering paper free care.
In September 2009, PCTI’s ‘EDT Hub’ was installed at NHS Tayside by Microtech Support Ltd as part of NHSScotland’s National Deployment.
Says a spokesperson: “Sending a paper based letter from a hospital to a GP practice is reported to cost a Trust between 50p and £1, resulting in significant time costs for practices to process.
“Ten million items of correspondence are sent to GP practices across Scotland each year.
“Not only is this costly compared to electronic communication, it is very slow and has no audit tracking. NHS Tayside have utilised PCTI’s EDT Hub to electronically transfer these letters electronically by integrating with the hospitals systems and delivering documents directly in to GP practices electronic workflow process for managing patient letters.
“Patient care is on hold during the transfer of a patient letter in a paper format until it reaches the patient’s GP.
“Managing the paper process is considered costly and time consuming. Utilising an electronic process to transfer patient letters has enabled NHS Tayside to deliver information to GPs in real-time by sending over 150,000 documents electronically every month.”
Microtech continues the daily monitoring of all activity on the Tayside EDT Hub down to the individual practice level to make sure that there is no interruption of service to either the sending systems or to the GP practice.
A further benefit of EDT was the ability to deliver cross-boundary documents to NHS Fife practices who referred many patients to Tayside hospitals due to locality.
Microtech worked with both NHS Tayside & NHS Fife to identify the practices involved in this next stage of the project, set up the sharing agreements and communication pathways between each health board to successfully rollout EDT to these practices.
Lesley McLay, chief operating officer, NHS Tayside, said: “We are now recognising many of the benefits attributed to putting EDT in practice such as improved patient safety, improved patient information quality and cost savings.
“NHS Tayside is now processing over 150,000 documents a month within eight document sources ranging from the Out of Hours Episodes, Immediate Discharge Letters and Lab Results.”
NHS Tayside were an early adopter and a great ambassador for the EDT Hub process. This key evidence supported the concept of the solutions ability that would drive efficiencies across Scottish health boards.
The national project has seen success across Scottish health boards with Microtech Support Ltd now having installed EDT to many of the health boards where over 400,000 documents are being sent monthly electronically.
E-health Insider will host an awards dinner which will be held on Thursday 10th October at the Roundhouse, Camden Town, London when we will find out if we have been successful winners of the award.
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Press contact
Chris McMail
01563 530480
07811430581
chris.mcmail@microtechsupport.co.uk
About Microtech
Microtech Support Limited are a professional IT Support and Maintenance Company based in the West of Scotland. Founded in 1986 on-going contracts with NHSScotland have allowed Microtech continual growth in the last few years to become one of the largest Professional IT Support and Maintenance Companies in Scotland. Microtech have over 30 members of staff including a full-time, fully-manned service desk and over 15 field engineers based throughout Scotland.
Further information
www.microtechsupport.co.uk
www.pcti.co.uk
www.ehealthawards.com
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Contact: Nicola McCulloch
Phone: 01563530480
Email: nicola.mcculloch@microtechsupport.co.uk
Website: http://www.microtechsupport.co.uk
