Author: Medi2data Team
Medi2data are exhibiting at the 2022 EMIS NUG Annual Conference & Exhibition
Medi2data Charity for 2021 – Glaucoma UK
Patient access to records via NHS app delayed until April next year
Medi2data chosen as Clarity’s first partner
Medi2data and Patients Association forge key partnership in patient-centric digital R&D project
Patient-first collaboration
Medi2data is collaborating with the Patients Association on a new product development project. The partnership enables patients to directly contribute to the development of Medi2data’s future offering, helping shape digital user experiences that meet the specific needs of patients, not just clinicians.
By sharing a patient-centric culture, the Patients Association and Medi2data are working to make sure the acceleration in digital adoption surrounding health and medical information, doesn’t ignore the needs of the end-user – the patient.
Patient groups are road-testing early versions of new Medi2data technologies, providing crucial feedback that helps Medi2data’s team of developers and user experience specialists refine products and services, ensuring they’re fit for purpose.
All of us are better when we work together
Rachel Power, CEO at Patients Association, said, “We are pleased to be working with Medi2data. This work will mean patient involvement feeds into the design, development and testing of a new product making it more accessible and patient-friendly”.
Richard Freeman, Founder and CEO at Medi2data, said, “We can’t create products without understanding patient needs, challenges and frustrations. The support from the Patient Association is invaluable in allowing us access to a wide range of patient feedback, so we can create new and innovative technologies that empower patients and help them access and manage their own medical information. This approach drives forward Medi2data’s raison d’etre, which has always been to co-produce technologies with partners, end-users and customers”.
Tackling the human cost of delayed medical reports – prompting the BMA, ICO and ABI to push for digital medical reporting
The admin burden on GPs and practice staff
Subject to Access requests and patient medical reports are part of the everyday non-clinical services that GP practices provide for insurance companies, solicitors, employers, and government agencies, with the average practice receiving about 12 report requests a week.
Despite encouragement to request reports digitally from the Association of British Insurers, BMA and ICO, over 90% of medical report requests are still sent to GP practices by post.
With GP practices stretched to breaking point and about to embark on the COVID-19 vaccination programme, completing medical reports can very easily slip to the bottom of the priority pile.
The cost of inefficient processes
To process a report manually can take practice staff between 20 to 80 minutes, including scanning, printing, redacting non GDPR-compliant information, passing the information to GPs for approval, and posting the report to the requesting organisation. The practice is also responsible for ensuring fees are paid where applicable.
Internal costs soar as staff time is allocated to these laborious tasks, and the process is open to error which can have dire consequences if reports are lost or not returned on time.
Removing the medical reporting headache
The BMA’s Access to medical reports guide mandates that practices should turn around medical reports within 21 days, but with the average GP practice working 50 hours a week more during the pandemic, how will they find the time? Some GP practices are warning that medical reports may take up to 8-9 weeks to complete.
The answer must lie in the adoption of technology that automates medical reporting, allowing GPs and practice staff to reallocate their time to more critical tasks.
Making the change to digital medical reporting
15-20% of practices have already made the change to digital reporting within their practices which can save up to 82% time and costs.
Haughton Thornley practice in Manchester has gone a step further, having outsourced all their medical reporting, using the eMR+ service from Medi2data, freeing up 18 hours a week.
Deborah Smith, practice manager, and Lorraine Hall, finance officer, saw eMR+ as a logical solution to free up time and reduce stress within the practice.
Lorraine says, “It was a no-brainer for us. Our admin team used to spend hours every week struggling to complete reports, and now it takes just five minutes each morning. We send our instructions to the eMR+ team who manage the entire process, including same day response, Clinician sign-offand billing and payment services.”
Putting quality and security first
Medi2data’s CEO, Richard Freeman, said, “We built eMR+ in collaboration with GPs, clinicians and practice staff to ensure it meets the highest quality and security standards.
GPs like the secure protocols used to ensure high quality redaction processes are used to complete reports. eMR+ automates any fee payments too, which means practice managers can easily keep track of reports and payments, without having to spend time chasing third parties.
“As practices are struggling with an ever-increasing workload, this free service removes some of the non-essential pressure on staff, so their time can be reallocated to other tasks.
“Third parties are happy because they receive high-quality digital reports, and patients are happy because their claim or request is processed quickly, removing the stress and anxiety of waiting for paperwork that directly affects their lives”.
Making the right choices in a digital world
The changing world of patient information
When I first entered the world of primary care as a bright-eyed young medical secretary 38 years ago, I quickly learned the art of juggling a huge number of responsibilities in a highly-organised, but incredibly time-consuming way. There were vast swaths of paper documents, often covered in illegible hand-writing to process, file and sort – and the speed at which we worked meant that sometimes vital information resided in a colleague’s head, rather than in an accessible repository.
In my earliest days, patient referral letters were typed on an old portable typewriter, with a carbon copy for the patient notes. For those of you too young to remember those days, the word processor is a wonderful invention!
The seeds of change blew my way in 1989 when, as a new practice manager, I oversaw the implementation of a computer system across the practice. For me, technology was new and exciting. Technology would revolutionise the way we worked. Technology was progress.
But computerising patient records was also hard work.
Ensuring that the relevant nuggets of patient information for 2,500 patients were correctly inputted into the system was a daunting task. Where to start, how to prioritise… and what were read codes??
At that time, there were no guidelines or suggestions, no paper-light practices, no information governance and no magic medication uploads. For printed prescriptions, we had to upload the repeat medication for all of our patients, and all of this whilst running the practice in the usual way.
Obstacles to digital adoption
I was lucky to work for a team who were quite progressive for that time. Once we had the system up and running, it transformed the way we worked. Since then, I’ve worked for, and with, organisations whose leaders were quite opposed to digital adoption. And surprisingly, many of the objections heard today are the same concerns as were voiced back then.
Data quality, privacy, implementation, cost, training, confidence in the system, job security fears, and resistance to change were all hurdles to overcome. Many GPs worried technology would create more problems than it solved.
The unreliability of early systems didn’t allay these fears either, so to push on to the next stage of a technological journey could be met with even more resistance. In 1990, the new GP contract came along, enabling us to forward plan and assess our funding options and opportunities. Those changes revolutionised general practice, making the use of technology vital if we were to remain in profit.
Of course, during the nineties, there were very few choices for general practice IT, but a couple of the main suppliers managed to see it through to the millennium and continue to bigger and better things. Throughout the 2000s, systems started improving and changing at a head-spinning rate. Just keeping up with the changes was a job in itself and IT managers started to be recruited alongside practice managers to support the pace of change.
Innovation stalled while the National Programme for IT attempted to implement one system across the NHS. When that programme ran aground, it was with relief I saw the focus was on localised investment, with system integration and interoperability at its heart.
Innovation was back on the agenda.
In 2012, I became a regional customer training manager for EMIS and started witnessing new, innovative digital systems springing up with increasing regularity. The steep curve of digital acceleration went hand in hand with the formation of new regulatory bodies to help maintain standards of compliance and interoperability across the healthcare sector.
With GPs and practice managers now somewhat reassured that digital systems would work and keep patient data safe, they found themselves with a welcome, but dizzying, choice of products and services to choose from.
So, where do you start?
Making the right decision for your practice
With hundreds of IT solutions now available, how do you know what’s best for your practice? What will deliver the best ROI and practice efficiencies? How do you coordinate different products and services within the practice? When does a practice management team even have time to review the options?
It can be easier to carry on with the familiar daily routines, rather than be spun around by the torrent of digital options, leaving you confused and nursing a headache. However, the time that you spend assessing and implementing something new, could save you hours, days, or weeks in the near future.
It’s the initial decision to drive business change that takes time and forward-thinking.
A few simple rules to get you on track
Every primary care organisation is different and will need different solutions to drive efficiencies. Still, I’ve learned from my many years’ experience of IT procurement, implementation, integration and training, that there are some universal guidelines can help you make the right digital choices and avoid pitfalls along the way:
- Keep it simple. If you can’t see how a system can deliver benefits straight away, it’s not going to work.
- Accreditations. Make sure your digital partner meets NHS and industry standards, so you know you can trust them with your data.
- Testimonials. Speak to people who’ve used the system. Discover what they’ve enjoyed and any snags they’ve experienced along the way.
- Support. Make sure you’ll be fully supported when you need help and advice.
- Business Change. Encouraging your team to help shape the business change will go a long way to ensuring its success – whether you’re implementing an ‘add on’ piece of software, or a complete system change. Examine the way your individual team members work now, and ask them to suggest changes. Track the changes and progress, and give feedback.
- Benefits. Ensure your team understands the benefits of the proposed changes for themselves, the medical staff and patients.
- Training. Ensure that training is adequate and that protected time is given for staff to become effective. Make sure all staff involved are happy and ‘buying in’ to the new system and its possibilities.
A last thought
For those of you old enough to remember the pink and blue cards placed in Lloyd George Folders to enable staff to pick out the diabetics, or smears due, or childhood vaccinations, think about the way that technology has enabled us to offer fantastic patient care, with working efficiencies across the board.
Would you have believed the way things are now compared to 35 years ago? I definitely wouldn’t have believed it. If I need to get a list of who needs a flu vaccination now, I can do it within five minutes of sitting at my computer and get the recall letters printed at the same time.
Technology is moving forward at an alarming rate. We need to keep up to take advantage of all it has to offer.
Lynn Tomlinson is a former practice manager, senior manager at PCT level, and GP practice clinical data trainer. Lynn is currently the clinical data specialist at Medi2data, responsible for auditing consented eMR patient data extractions from the GP practices’ clinical systems and the integration of clinical code releases (Snomed CT) with eMR.
An interview with Richard Freeman
Working more efficiently through a global crisis and beyond
Transformational change occurring within primary care
Primary care and its delivery of patient care and services has been transformed in the space of just a few weeks. Adjusting to new ways of working amidst a global pandemic takes a considerable toll on the physical, intellectual and emotional well-being of front-line staff.
The BMA and RCGP created workload prioritisation guidance to reassure practices during the COVID-19 outbreak that they can delay routine work while coping with changes on an unprecedented scale.
Despite managing the initial impact on GP surgeries during the last 8-10 weeks of the pandemic, many doctors wonder how they will cope with a potential spike in demand following COVID-19.
Increased demand could overwhelm practices as they continue to manage the ongoing care of shielded patients and those who have yet to present their symptoms and have kept away from GP surgeries during the outbreak.
How technology is helping
Primary care has accelerated its adoption of online and digital tools from the utilisation levels seen before the outbreak. Overnight, GPs started conducting three out of four consultations by video or telephone. Digital processes have been implemented with lightning speed to minimise human contact.
The desire to protect staff and patients has driven innovation. Healthcare technology suppliers have helped where they can, designing new digital services to help relieve the pressure, often for free.
Practices and federations are realising the benefits of digitised processes such as e-consultations, patient text messaging and outsourced medical reporting services.
The suspicion or reluctance that can sometimes prevent digital adoption has been replaced with a drive to do whatever it takes to keep people safe. There are daily discoveries of new, efficient ways of working that save valuable time and use resources more effectively.
Sustaining the digital journey
So what happens when some degree of normality returns, whatever that may look like? Technology and its role in patient care will be part of the ‘reset’ debate because we’ve discovered that when the world is catapulted out of its comfort zone, we can adapt. We can make changes and see results quickly. Hopefully, this outlook will continue into our post-COVID future, trusting technology to create a more effective primary care system and an improved patient experience.
A positive outlook
Our collective ability to adapt and persevere through this world pandemic has been impressive. There have been mistakes, misinformation and confusion along the way, but as a nation, we are pulling together in a direction not experienced since the Second World War.
So, when we look back at the extraordinary events of 2020, will we remember a time when the world stopped, we looked up and crisis-managed the situation, only to return to the old ways of doing things and viewing our society? Or will this indeed be a documented point in history which changed the way we live and work, as well as allowing us to re-calibrate our moral compass?