Download a PDF (English) version of this story.

St Helens and Knowsley Hospitals move from paper to electronic health record management to further improve the quality of patient care

St Helens and Knowsley Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust has installed an electronic document management system (EDMS), using C-Cube software from OITUK and KODAK i660 and i780 scanners, to radically change the way health records are distributed around its various outpatient facilities in Merseyside.

Guaranteed Records Availability

The new system means the Trust will be able to 100% guarantee health records availability when 250,000 outpatients arrive for consultations each year, with improved quality of service to patients and clinicians at the point of care. In addition to significant clinical benefits, The Trust expects the system to pay for itself within 3 years through staff, storage and efficiency cost savings.

The impact of a paper-based system for patients is that historically no guarantee could be made that clinicians would have their medical files ready at the time of any given appointment, due to the logistics involved in the movement of around 1,200 health records each day. St Helens and Knowsley Hospitals move from paper to electronic health record management to further improve the quality of patient care The Trust selected to install OITUK’s C-Cube EDMS. Neil Darvill, Director of Informatics at the Trust explains, “An EDMS was the only way we could start to take control and shrink case file growth.

Scan-on-Demand Approach

To convert the numerous paper-based medical files into quality electronic images, three high performance Kodak production scanners – one i780 and two i660 series machines – have been installed based on OITUK’s recommendation which can each cope with vast scanning volumes per day¹. Even using a scan-on-demand approach, where only the records required by visiting patients are scanned, the Trust expects to scan over 671,800 files over a five year period² hence the need for high capacity devices.

Darvill comments, “Once we had been trained on the Kodak scanners, they proved to be reliable, fast, hassle free with excellent image quality which is key, given we have a myriad of different documents to scan. This ranges from A4 and A5 sheets, photos, ECG³ traces which are 3" high and 24 feet long, thick cardboard, and red paper with black type which can be tricky for some scanners to recognise.”

In the business case presented to the Trust’s board, the project team estimates that £3.2 million will be saved over 5 years using a scan-ondemand approach further to an initial investment totalling £1.205 million to cover IT and additional scanning staff.

Patient & Organisational Benefits

The patient benefits are huge. Health professionals can now provide far better quality of care as they have the right paperwork in front of them, and, in turn, because they’re empowered, the patient has a better medical experience.

Darvill concludes, “If you’re in the NHS and managing an acute facility, I would suggest that the future lies in digitising your health records library using a scanon- demand approach. It is a simple way to get the operational savings and efficiencies, increase clinical quality, and alleviate all the problems which paper systems may create.

A Partnership Approach

David Whitton, UK sales manager Kodak Document Imaging, says, “In contrast to common perceptions and frequent media reports, this project clearly shows that public sector IT implementations, particularly in the national health service, can be successful. The Trust has worked with a reputable lead partner in OITUK, resourced the project properly which meets the needs of local healthcare staff who have been involved from inception to implementation to ensure project success.”

¹ Recommended daily scanning volumes for the Kodak i660 and i780 scanners are respectively 120,000 and 130,000 pages per day

² This figure is made up of Health Records (546,182), Casualty Cards (54,620) and Health Record Supplement files (71,004)

³ Electrocardiogram