The surgery receives up to 125 documents every day, so it is vital to have effective back office processes to manage the workload efficiently.
Southview Surgery use the clinical system EMIS Web with PCTI’s Docman, Intellisense and EDT.
“A huge amount of time is saved in not having to scan them in and there is a massive speed advantage in that they arrived the moment they are produced.”
Quicker processing and document capture
Dr Paul Kuzmin highlights the efficiency gains, “We scan hard-copy documents in at our main surgery and we receive electronic documents via EDT. We use Intellisense to interpret the data by clinic type and hospital details to speed-up the filing process. Electronic documents received with meta-data enable auto-patient matching and pre-populated filing fields so that processing is quicker, but removing the scanning process is a good step forward.”
“We also capture other important items for our intranet such as learning handouts, which we manage in the non-patient document area within Docman. We hold important communications from the PCT and we can workflow these around the practice to the relevant person when required.”
Effective workflow
“Documents are distributed to the relevant Doctor by the workflow function in Docman. The relevant clinicians themselves decide if the information is worth circulating to other users and also highlight and comment on documents required. We have huge numbers of actions to fulfil or occasionally put in items that need to be coded. We simply highlight the document and click read coding highlighted, which is then automatically sent to my coding team and removed from my workflow.”
“Docman benefits me by having both an ordered account of all patient interactions with outside providers and out of hours as well. The system also benefits for personal use in terms of building up an electronic portfolio of lecture handouts and for the practice to store vital administrative documents. I can also access these documents from my Pocket PC.”
What advice would you give other practices?
“Definitely get EDT and Intellisense, but you only need Intellisense for the scanning workstations.”
Electronic documents into Docman
“By using EDT we receive many communications from our local hospital, but it is a pity that all departments do not seem to use this. We are currently receiving through EDT, attendance at accident and emergency and outpatient letters. A huge amount of time is saved in not having to scan them in and there is a massive speed advantage in that they arrived the moment they are produced.”
“Overall I find that Docman is very popular with practices locally.”