UQ Health Service Focuses On Patients Not Paperwork
UQ Health Service Focuses On Patients Not Paperwork
A new electronic patient record management pays for itself in a few months at the University of Queensland Health Service
University of Queensland Health Service is not the biggest or best-known medical practice in Australia, but its reputation for working cleverly is second to none, due in no small way to its adoption of the latest information technologies.
Established in 1958, the health service is a fully accredited general medical practice providing high-quality health care to almost 40,000 students, 5250 staff and campus visitors at the University of Queensland’s three campuses: St Lucia, in Brisbane; Gatton, near Toowoomba; and the city of Ipswich. The three clinics also provide emergency and workplace treatment, and, at the university’s main campus in St Lucia, psychiatric services.
Established in 1958, the health service is a fully accredited general medical practice providing high-quality health care to almost 40,000 students, 5250 staff and campus visitors at the University of Queensland’s three campuses: St Lucia, in Brisbane; Gatton, near Toowoomba; and the city of Ipswich. The three clinics also provide emergency and workplace treatment, and, at the university’s main campus in St Lucia, psychiatric services.
As is typical of many health service providers in Australia today, the university practice has very high patient numbers but is quite lean compared to the industry standard. These three busy clinics simply cannot afford to be slow in updating vital patient records or swamped in a sea of paperwork.
Long time coming
The three clinics cater for a potential patient base of around 43,000 people, and up to 30 per cent of patients are new, requiring staff to generate new patient files. According to Ms Hall, staff were “overwhelmed” by their daily workload before the new Canon solution was implemented.
Even though the health service has had a computerised front desk since 1996, the clinical notes side of the three sites was still paper-based. In the decade since, the health service has taken several steps towards reducing paperwork through information technology, but with results that have varied.
The St Lucia clinic was the first to travel down the paperless road when in 2000 it mandated all medical files, medical notes, patient records and outward correspondence – and as much inward correspondence as possible – was to be electronic. The Gatton clinic then followed, while Ipswich is planning to move to computerised notes at the end of 2006.
However, totally eliminating paper has proven somewhat difficult as the clinics continue to receive paper-based specialist referrals, electrocardiograms, respiratory function tests, patient photographs and so on.
Rather than keep the paper files and/or key the information into the relevant software system, the practices had used scanners to turn the hard copies into electronic versions, allowing them to discard the paper original. However, before the introduction of the new Canon solution, the clinic staff were having to spend a high proportion of their days scanning in new paperwork. What’s more, despite this effort they still had to sift through paper files when the electronic versions could not be found.
Search for a solution
Betty Hall, Practice Manager, realised that a new approach was required if the health service was to introduce high-speed, high-volume and high-quality scanning, eliminate the manual re-entry of all medical documentation and enjoy all the potential benefits of electronic document management.
To make this happen, Ms Hall contacted three prominent vendors to seek their advice. Canon Australia responded to this opportunity by deploying a consulting team to the health service. The consultants analysed the services’ business, work practices, work loads, existing technology and budget.
Ms Hall selected the Canon solution over the other two vendors’ because it promised to be fast, affordable, reliable and easy to use, and because it was designed to be used for both high-volume batch scanning and distributed scanning environments. “Canon is a good brand, and we have used other Canon products and they were very reliable,” added Ms Hall.
Up and running
Having worked with Ms Hall and the clinics’ staff to design the best possible solution, the group continued working closely to implement it.
The health service upgraded its PCs to Windows XP to take advantage of improved medical applications including a new clinical notes record system. Meanwhile, the consulting team and the health service worked closely to implement Canon’s imageREAL Capture software system.
Ms Hall describes the upgrade process, which began in late 2004 as “quick and seamless”.
Basketful of benefits
Today, the three campus clinics are connected by a network and all scanned files are saved to the network server. Any documents that arrive in paper form are quickly scanned and automatically sorted and filed by the new Canon system.
Today, every single paper-based file is digitised, and staff set aside only a short period each day to scan new paperwork into the system in one go. Up to 250 pages a day are scanned at St Lucia with less at the other campus clinic.
Canon imageREAL acts as a central repository, automatically sorting and storing all files so staff can find and retrieve them at will. “With electronic notes, it’s all there on the doctors’ computer,” Ms Hall explains. “The doctors’ easy accessibility to patient files is a huge advantage. Everything they need to know about a patient is at their fingertips.”
Ms Hall says investing in the new solution is one of the best things the practice has ever done, as it has brought economic savings, improved productivity levels and enabled better ways of working to an extent that “cannot be underestimated”.
“We regained control, and workloads became more manageable, especially for administration staff,” explains Ms Hall. “We can operate with a smaller number of support staff compared to similar sized medical outfits with the same number of doctors. We are very lean compared to the industry standard.
“The way we operate effectively is to use whatever we can to work as smart as possible – and that means adopting the latest technology. You have to make the maximum use of technology when you haven’t got the feet on the ground.”
The productivity gains come from many directions, including the solution’s ability to automatically scan documents in batches, rather than requiring the clinics’ busy staff to spend their time scanning them one at a time. “Wages are an organisation’s biggest expense these days, so no one can afford to have someone just standing there over a machine like that for so long,” she said.
Ms Hall says the system’s other benefits include space savings (by eliminating the need to store paper-based files) and low operational and maintenance costs. “The good thing about scanners is they have very few working parts, so there is not a lot to break down and no consumables to pay for,” she adds.
The new system has been welcomed by all practice staff – clerical and medical – and has improved patient service. And through labour cost savings, it paid for itself in just a few months.
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