NHS integrated care board brings 80-plus GP practices into the digital age, improving care for more than 3 million patients
Customer Success Stories
Industry Healthcare Challenge Support NHS transformational efforts by accelerating the digitisation of vast archives of Lloyd George paper-based records. Solution Iron Mountain® fully-managed scanning service ensures secure compliance throughout collection, transportation, imaging, and destruction of paper files.
Value
- GPs can make faster informed decisions, at the point of need
- Better placed to reduce A&E attendances and readmissions
- Significantly less time transferring records between practices
- Space released for administering frontline patient care
- Improved visibility into compliant file retention and destruction
Speeding the move to digital-first primary care
With the NHS committed to digital transformation, general practice (GP) surgeries face the monumental task of converting decades’ worth of so-called ‘Lloyd George’ paper-based records. Leading the charge is an NHS Integrated Care Board (ICB) that is a centre of excellence for innovative partnerships and industry best practices. The ICB is strongly focused on improving patient outcomes, tackling inequalities, enhancing productivity, and supporting social and economic development.
One of its valued relationships is with Iron Mountain®, a lead supplier on the NHS England Dynamic Purchasing System Framework as well as a range of other NHS England-approved procurement routes. “Patient records across the GP communities we support had recently tripled in size due to population increases and various mergers,” says the ICT business support officer at the ICB. “Following a strict selection process Iron Mountain quickly got to work, uplifting and digitising paper documents in the first months.”
Seamless one-stop solution
The service currently covers more than 80 GP surgeries across six boroughs serving a total of 3.1 million patients.
Delivered as a fully-managed end-to- end solution, Iron Mountain specialists carefully index, prepare and scan all paper documents. The digital images are then uploaded to a highly secure web portal, hosted and managed by market-leading clinical system provider EMIS.
“We regularly receive reports and hold review meetings, so always know where we are in terms of project status,” adds the business support officer. “The transparency and attention to detail are impressive. Questions and issues tend to be resolved on the spot or taken away by Iron Mountain and attended to quickly.”
The transparency and attention to detail are impressive. Questions and issues tend to be resolved on the spot or taken away by Iron Mountain and attended to quickly.
Faster informed decisions
Physical records face several potential risks. The same is true of digital records which are not stored and managed appropriately with multiple levels of security in place. The Iron Mountain solution restricts access to only authorised accounts and devices, controlled in accordance with the British standards for information management systems. “Now, GPs make faster informed decisions at the point of need, directly impacting the quality of patient care,” notes the business support officer. “And they worry less about paper records being mislaid, damaged or ending up in the wrong hands.”
Doing more with less cost and effort
Gone also are the lengthy waits incurred transferring paper records between GPs, for example, when patients change practices. Compared to before, it’s also much easier for practices to meet legal obligations – such as retaining records for assisting in the settlement of insurance claims and legal cases – without having rooms and even entire facilities dedicated to document storage.
“Moving to digital records helped free up space that can be reallocated to consultation and clinical areas for administering frontline patient care,” says one of the GPs covered by the ICB. “The directive that Lloyd George envelopes could now also be destroyed has been welcomed by all.”
Greater visibility for compliant records destruction
All Lloyd George records pertaining to British citizens must be retained for a period of ten years after a patient’s death or after the patient has left the UK. This does not apply to electronic health records, which must be kept for the foreseeable future. Migrating to a unified digital platform provides practices with complete visibility over the process according to compliance regulations, while supporting the need for the long-term storage of electronic health records.
Moving to digital records helped free-up space that can be reallocated to consultation and clinical areas for administering frontline patient care at Iron Mountain, and we quickly found a solution.
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