Case study 3

Central Manchester and Manchester Children's University Hospitals NHS Trust uses MedisecTRUST and MedisecNET to guarantee the overnight delivery of clinical correspondence to GPs.

Central Manchester and Manchester Children's University Hospitals NHS Trust is using Medisec software to dramatically speed up the delivery of patient discharge information and clinical correspondence to its GPs.

The software provides electronic links between all six of the Trust's hospitals and 69 GP practices within central and south Manchester.

MedisecTRUST automatically generates clinic attendance letters, discharge notification forms and discharge summaries for electronic delivery direct to surgeries via MedsecNET. Instead of arriving weeks after the patient has left the hospital, discharge information can now be issued and accessed overnight, helping GPs to offer their patients higher standards of after-care.

David Whitehead, Practice Business Manager at West Point Medical Centre in Levenshulme, Manchester explains: "Medisec software has been pivotal in improving the quality and availability of patient information. It's very popular with administrative staff, eliminating the need to scan or re-input documents.

"With more than 7,000 patients on our books, we estimate it saves us at least an hour every day. As well as saving us time and effort, it directly addresses one of the major ongoing problems in the NHS - that GP practices often do not receive any discharge information about their patients following hospital treatment until weeks after they have left, and sometimes not at all."

A patient can be seen at Manchester Royal Infirmary, for example, in the morning and visit his GP for follow-up care the next day and they will be fully up-to-speed with his condition. GPs can also access patient records securely online and instantly access future hospital appointments.

Correspondence signed off in the hospital is available for practices to download the next morning and attach to the patient record. Documents can be loaded without dual keying or scanning and GPs can view letters individually or download them in bulk for processing.

Don Crombie, Clinical Systems Manager at Central Manchester and Manchester Children's University Hospitals NHS Trust commented: "With 454 staff using the Medisec system to produce around 38,000 letters per month, the technology is helping us to significantly improve the quality and turnaround times of our documents.

"Patient information is immediately accessible to all authorised users throughout the hospitals, which saves time by reducing queries about admissions, discharges and clinic appointments. With Medisec, we can check how full our clinics are, access a complete history of admissions and appointments and view all future appointments for any patient."