UXBRIDGE, U.K., November 9, 2015 – For healthcare to work better, clinicians and health workers need the latest information at their fingertips. Patient prescriptions, appointment times, historical notes. All in one place.

In pursuit of this vision, Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust partnered with Xerox to digitise its records management processes, and has scanned over 81 million pages to provide digital and mobile-friendly access to information across its clinics and admissions centres.

By eliminating the need to search for physical records in cabinets, the new system is saving hours every week for health workers, allowing them to focus their efforts on patient care, and make more informed decisions.

Mike McCabe, a consultant anaesthetist at Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust said instant access to records helps him make better decisions for the patient. "It's like flying a plane with radar instead of without,” Recently he was called to an emergency surgery for a man just admitted with a ruptured aneurysm. "We had to act immediately. Previously that meant doing our best without context. This time, having his name, we instantly access his records. With his medical history revealed, we adjust our plan."

24/7, secure access to critical records
The Trust, which covers three sites in Redditch, Kidderminster and Worcester, receives over 2,000 patients per day across accident & emergency, emergency and planned admissions and outpatients.

To ensure the documents for these patients are scanned correctly, clinicians write their notes on forms carrying smart barcodes, which are sent for scanning immediately after use. These files are stored as images and processed through Xerox’s secure, on-site scanning centres, using optical character recognition to enable smart indexing of these files.

As a result, authorised users have 24/7 access to electronic, searchable clinical records at the point of care delivery. Using an iPad interface from Kainos Evolve, they can call records to hand instantly when there is a need to act quickly.

“Patients receive better treatment when their records are readily available – it’s that simple, said Dr Steve Graystone, associate medical director, Patient Safety at Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust. “The Xerox records management team are our colleagues in patient care.”

This project marks the beginning of Worcestershire’s move towards digitisation, in keeping with the NHS’ wider challenge to ‘go paperless’ by 2020.’

“Digitising paper-based records has a huge part to play in increasing efficiencies within the NHS,” said Darren Cassidy, managing director at Xerox UK.

“Not only does it save time for staff, but ensuring records are always available and up to date has a critical impact on the decisions made about patient care. We are continually focused on making healthcare work better, finding better ways for people, process and technology to work together.”

About Xerox
Xerox is helping change the way the world works. By applying our expertise in imaging, business process, analytics, automation and user-centric insights, we engineer the flow of work to provide greater productivity, efficiency and personalisation. We conduct business in 180 countries, and our more than 130,000 employees create meaningful innovations and provide business process services, printing equipment, software and solutions that make a real difference for our clients – and their customers. Learn more at www.xerox.com.

 

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Media Contacts:
Sonia Panchal, Xerox Europe, +44 (0) 1895 842 877, sonia.panchal@xerox.com

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