100% Digital Records: Just What the Doctor Ordered

Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust HEALTHCARE SOLUTIONS

“It may be a cliché, but Xerox really is a partner rather than a provider. They own our objectives as theirs, and we couldn’t achieve our digital strategy nearly as smoothly without them. Together we’re delivering better care in five of London’s hospitals.” – Linda Watts, GDE Programme Manager and Head of Health Records, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust

ABOUT THE TRUST With five hospitals on four sites in London, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust is one of the largest NHS trusts in England. It has close to 12,000 staff and completes more than a million patient appointments every year.

The trust is one of 16 acute Global Digital Exemplars (GDEs) in England. These are internationally recognised NHS organisations that can act as a reference for the use of digital technologies in healthcare, and help other trusts to follow in their digital footsteps.

CASE STUDY SNAPSHOT

The Challenge The Solution The Results

• Free up valuable hospital space • Ability to leverage the trust’s ‘digital • Successful pilot: ~30,000 records and improve information access at point of care’ strategy scanned in six months at Western by digitising: Eye Hospital • Partnership with Xerox to: –– Four on-site patient record libraries • 547m2 of floor space claimed back –– Implement an end-to-end record (~700,000-1,000,000 sets of for clinical use so far scanning service records) • >30% reduction in health records –– Deliver a secure cloud-based –– An off-site archive (~18 million budget in 2 years document management system, records or ~2.8 billion pages) completely integrated with the • 50% reduction in records staff (from • Simultaneously reduce the health trust’s electronic health record 113 to 56) while avoiding redundancy records budget year on year (EHR) system costs

• On track to reduce budget to £0.5m through 5-year strategy HEALTHCARE SOLUTIONS

THE CHALLENGE permanently hired. This retained valuable When you work with Xerox you have When Imperial College Healthcare NHS members of staff, avoided redundancy confidence that the inevitable hiccups Trust appointed Linda Watts as the Head costs, and returned their salaries to the will quickly be cured. They know what of Health Records, her remit was clear: records management budget. they’re doing, and they really stand out for responsiveness and flexibility.” to digitise the trust’s four on-site patient Meanwhile, Linda had also addressed record libraries and its off-site archive, inefficiencies in the trust’s offsite records The library at St Mary’s Hospital followed, together holding around 2.8 billion archive service. With advice from Xerox to freeing up 547m2 of floor space for pages. back her up, she moved the trust’s archive clinical use. Once Hammersmith Hospital 2 Linda wasn’t expecting any additional from box-based to open-rack storage, is digitised, a further 489m will be freed, budget to achieve this objective. delivering additional savings. and at Charing Cross Hospital there will be space for a whole new 23-bed ward. “In fact,” she says, “I still needed to Step 2: Appoint the right digitisation reduce the health records budget year partner When Linda started this digitisation project, the health records budget was on year, in line with our overall cost With budget freed, the trust went to around £3.8m. Just over two years later improvement programme.” tender for a scanning partner under the it’s down to £2.6m, and on track to be Crown Commercial Service framework just £0.5m following a five-year strategy. THE SOLUTION RM3781. “Most importantly,” she says, “our Linda did have two things on her side. “Xerox was head and shoulders above clinical staff have really taken to The first was that, having worked with the other respondents, both for the working completely digitally. And we’re Xerox at another trust, she knew she quality of its offer and in being the also using the scanned records to give could leverage their expertise as she lowest-cost option,” says Linda. In its patients better access to their own developed her plans. end-to-end service, Xerox is: records through the Care Information The second was that the trust had • Digitising all onsite records, site by Exchange portal.” already been capturing patient records site and specialty by specialty, with digitally at the point of care for about on-demand scanning of files for ® 12-18 months. It had decided to move to upcoming appointments XEROX HEALTHCARE electronic note-taking soon after SOLUTIONS • Securely destroying scanned records implementing its EHR system a few years Xerox® healthcare solutions help after two months, to allow for quality earlier — a decision that proved very connect all the moving pieces in assurance valuable. a complex environment: from • Scanning offsite archived records digitising medical records to Step 1: Free up budget to maintain a standard run-rate facilitating patient communication. With the recent history of many active Our information management tools patients already digital, Linda discovered • Managing the relationship with will help you realise efficiencies, through an audit that in around 30% of the offsite storage provider personalise interactions, and cases, the paper files delivered to clinics • Managing the tender process for comply with regulations. were always returned unused (because a secure, integrated cloud-based When all of these things work for some specialties, once a patient’s document management system, to be together, the result is improved history was older than a year or 18 delivered as part of the Xerox service. patient care. months, it was generally no longer Together, Xerox and Imperial chose relevant to the care given). MediViewer from IMMJ Systems. Find out more at Using this data, Linda got clinical buy-in xerox.co.uk/ for her team to stop delivering legacy THE RESULTS healthcare records to those no longer using them. The value of the Xerox service was This meant she could reclaim budget proven during the pilot project, in which originally earmarked for additional Western Eye Hospital’s library of some recruitment, and in fact release almost 30,000 records was digitised. a third of her existing team: some 40 people. Linda lent them to other “We evaluated the pilot continually departments with vacancies, where they through its duration,” says Linda, “but proved themselves and were soon honestly, it was pretty straightforward.