Case study 1

The medical secretariat at the Countess of Chester Hospital use MedisecTRUST to automate routine tasks - and help save the Trust 17,000 man-hours a year.

The Countess of Chester Hospital NHS Foundation Trust in Cheshire uses MedisecTRUST to automatically generate clinic attendance letters, discharge notification forms, discharge summaries, A&E letters and radiology reports - all in Microsoft Word. By automating routine tasks, the technology has saved the hospital an estimated 17,000 man-hours a year, or £100k.

Documents are automatically populated with the most up-to-date patient information which is uploaded every hour from the hospital's patient administration system. The medical secretaries then add in clinical dictation notes using Word templates. As well as improving the content and presentation of correspondence, no letters are lost in the post.

Consultants can electronically sign letters, make them 'read only', and post them to the Medisec web system for electronic delivery direct to the GP practice. GPs, for their part, can access real-time clinical patient information.

Storing information electronically has stopped the constant paperchase. Previously, patient file notes would often have to physically located and then searched to find the answers to GP questions. The majority of enquiries can now be answered at the touch of a button.

The front end of the software is tailored for medical secretaries with a patient search facility providing access to detailed information on current patient status. There's a general keyword search and a GP search button provides contact details for all the GPs on the system. In addition, the centralised storage and retrieval of information reduces the risk of errors, eliminating the need to re-key information.

Instead of arriving weeks after the patient has left the hospital, discharge information can now potentially be issued and accessed overnight. For GPs, this means a patient could visit A&E at the Countess in the morning and come to them for follow-up care the next day when they will be fully up-to-speed with his or her condition.

The software also helps to identify where there are bottlenecks in the system. A reminder of how many letters still need to be signed off is displayed and it keeps a count on the number of days delay between a patient being discharged and the relevant discharge note being issued to their GP. Healthcare partners can also be copied in on critical clinical correspondence.

A&E letters have been added to the system allowing GP partners to access them electronically. Most practices have chosen not to have the paper versions sent to them, further cutting costs.