St Thomas’ Hospital improves emergency patient record handling with Ricoh healthcare service
St Thomas’ Hospital in central London has one of the busiest Emergency departments in the NHS with around 140,000 patients every year. But key parts of patient record handling were still manual and slow. After bringing in a Ricoh Healthcare Solution the patient pathway from admission to discharge has been sped up and made more efficient, and the risk of record-keeping errors significantly reduced.
St Thomas’ Emergency Department is one of the busiest emergency healthcare departments in the NHS with 140,000 attendances a year or around 380 patients every day. As with all healthcare institutions, time is critical in ensuring that a patient receives the best care possible, not just assessments and treatments, but also the administration functions that support healthcare provision.
When a patient comes into the Emergency Department an electronic patient record is created or, if they are an existing patient, their record is called up. Any treatment they receive needs to be added to the patient’s electronic notes so that other clinicians are aware of the healthcare history. This is critical to avoiding mistakes in future healthcare provision for a patient.
However, a key part of this process was still being done manually. Staff would have to search for the patient’s notes and then make sure that any notes from treatment in the Emergency Department were appended to their patient record. This manual operation was slow and cumbersome for staff, it slowed down patient care and impacted on the amount of time it took for the patient to move through the system.
NHS hospitals are under increasing pressure to improve services especially within their emergency and outpatient operations. So the hospital wanted to find way to a streamline the data gathering procedures whilst also ensuring that records were correctly identified and notes accurately allocated.
The hospital decided to use a Ricoh solution and one of the key features of Ricoh technology is its ability to handle the capture, management and distribution of information in a controlled and efficient way. Ricoh Healthcare Solution based on a Ricoh Managed Document Service (MDS). It is being used to improve the way patients move through the Emergency Department, as well as support other administration functions around the hospital. The Ricoh solution comprises 10 Ricoh Multifunction Products (MFPs) connected via the hospital’s secure NHS network. Three of the Ricoh MFPs have been deployed in the Emergency Department’s administration offices specifically for handling patient information.
Doctors caring for patients in the Emergency Department write down observations, treatments and drugs administered on documents that have barcodes that are linked to a specific patient. The Ricoh MFPs have the ability to scan these documents so that electronic copies can be created. Document management software integrated with the Ricoh MDS identifies the document barcodes and then automatically links the scanned notes with the patient’s master record. The other Ricoh MFPs are used in other parts of the hospital for general administration such as printing, copying and some scanning.
As a result of the Ricoh MDS, St Thomas’ has improved the patient experience and the way patients are managed through the Emergency Department. The speed and efficiency with which the Emergency Department is able to release patients or pass them to the next stage of treatment, has been improved. For patients it means less time wasted on administration and a faster treatment process.
Staff no longer need to find and attach individual patient records because the Ricoh implementation helps them automatically and instantly attach treatment information to the main patient record. The Ricoh solution helps establish a seamless link from admission, treatment and discharge through to the next stage of patient care.
Administration staff have found that the Ricoh solution has helped patients move through the system faster, find beds quickly and have a more efficient experience.
Read the full case study via ricoh.co.uk
