In house, outsourced or hybrid - what's the most effective scanning model?

Health secretary Jeremy Hunt’s call for a ‘paperless’ NHS reflected the widespread acknowledgement that shunting tens of thousands of paper records around the system each day is no longer practicable.

When Trusts are considering moving to electronic patient records there are many practical issues that need to be addressed and the management of the scanning process plays a significant role.

There are typically three options to consider when scanning paper records; In house, Outsourced or Hybrid?

At Basildon and Thurrock University Hospital NHS Trust they adopted an in house approach to manage and address their scanning requirements.

First and foremost the EMR system was introduced at BTUH to improve health care business efficiency and provide better integrated health and related services. ‘Unity’ the EMR solution provided by Fortrus Ltd acts as a clinical decision support tool which allows clinicians 24-hour access to structured, historic information about their patients, entailing the digital capture of almost half a million patient case notes.

The Board sanctioned the Programme on the understanding that it would deliver an ROI of 13% on a £6.3m investment over a period of five years, as well as provide tangible benefits to patient care and operational effectiveness. This has been realised through the closure of its large off-campus records library, along with the salaries of 65 medical records staff, some of whom have been redeployed.

When BTUH began the procurement process in late 2009 the core specification was described by the Supplier community as “…the most comprehensive of its type to date.” This was not a tender for deploying an EDM system. The Trust were seeking a solution that would provide clinical decision support. The tender necessitated a consortium approach as suppliers were required to provide scanning and development expertise underpinned by implementation experience. 

The Trust now owns, manages and runs a very sophisticated scanning and indexing bureau allowing them to introduce standards and adopt a flexible approach to accelerate their scanning capacity. The benefits realised from having the in house development capability, allows them to continually develop the solution to not only improve user experience, but also increase clinical, operational and scanning efficiencies. 

We all know that one single approach may not be suitable for all, and what works for one Trust may not work for another, but there are clearly lessons to be learnt from the demonstrable success of the digitisation project at BTUH and what they have delivered and achieved to date.

For further information regarding the three approaches please see the 'Scanning the horizon' article recently featured on Digitalhealth.net:

http://www.digitalhealth.net/Features/item.cfm?&docId=444