Hinchingbrooke delivers 24-hour e-discharge letters with EMIS Health

Published: 30-Jul-2015

Hinchingbrooke Health Care NHS Trust deploys Correspondence Hub solution


Hinchingbrooke Health Care NHS Trust is delivering vital discharge information to GPs within hours instead of weeks, thanks to a successful electronic record-sharing initiative powered by EMIS Health.

Using the Correspondence Hub solution, which enables digital delivery of previously-manual correspondence, the trust is already speeding up the delivery of documents, including discharge letters, which used to take two weeks to reach GPs. They now arrive electronically within 24 hours.

Following this success, the trust is now focused on achieving its paperless goals and improving communication across healthcare settings by integrating electronic document and record management (EDRM) into its electronic patient record (EPR) system, both provided by EMIS Health.

The EDRM solution will be integrated to all key clinical systems in secondary care, automatically populating each patient’s digital patient case note and where applicable, securely sharing clinical documents and correspondence across the local health economy, wherever patients are being cared for. Document capture technology will digitise existing paper records and make them more accessible.

By sharing patient information digitally across multiple healthcare settings, the trust expects to improve patient care and safety, and deliver cost savings through efficiencies.

Gordon Greaves, associate director of IT at the trust, said: “The GP letters solution has been a fantastic piece of work that has quickly enabled us to meet our targets – all information can now be submitted within 24 hours, from a process that used to take up to two weeks for letters to get to the GP.

“By enhancing our EPR system further with EMIS Health’s EDRM solution, we can truly integrate and digitise our clinical data and have one complete, instantly-accessible patient record, removing the associated cost and resources associated with storing paper-based records.”

Bettina Fitt, director of markets and commercial for EMIS Health, said: “Trusts are under pressure to deliver digital records with EDRM, to recognise the well-documented benefits. We are helping our customers to determine optimum operating models, removing the associated costs of a paper centric service, whilst managing transformation to improve patient safety through delivery of a single integrated patient record, easily shared between all healthcare settings. We look forward to working with Hinchingbrooke to implement our EDRM solution so they can start to realise the benefits of a paperless EPR.”

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