Newcastle upon Tyne NHS case study
The Newcastle upon Tyne N.H.S. Trust is one of the largest hospitals in the UK, having between the three main sites approximately 2000 beds and 9000 staff, with an annual revenue budget of £300 million.
The trust is recognised as a Teaching Hospital and has one of the largest Medical Record Archive in the country, having never adopted a destruction policy. Over the years the Trust has microfilmed Medical Records, but, in 1998 decided that filming was not going to give them the long term security they required.
After speaking with the Trust, Datatron entered into consultation to set about producing a pilot project, to test the validity of scanning Medical Records as opposed to Microfilming.
A full 12 months trial on a controlled selection of medical records followed, with resounding success.
The pilot project looked at all elements of the service, not just the end result of the images, this included the manor in which files would be documented, transported, processed and imported, and thereafter how the images would be managed throughout the trust both centrally and departmentally.
The success of the pilot project quickly evolved into a Trust wide policy, to digitally archive records from the medical departments, HR and finance. The result is 53 departments throughout the Trust now employing Datatron's services to scan their archive documents.
After 8 years of scanning for the Trust, they now have the largest digital medical records archive in the country, with over 90 million documents available over the Trust network, managed by the ADOS document management system.
