CCube Solutions has launched a health record archiving service for GP practices to scan Lloyd George records currently stored within the practice and make available electronically, ensuring quality and cost efficiency at all times. This provides an opportunity for practices to significantly reduce storage costs, achieved through a skilled capable workforce, uniquely placed to deliver proven EDMS for health records.
Vijay Magon, CEO, CCube Solutions, Most GP practices are reasonably computerised but one area still completely paper-based are the Lloyd George envelopes which contain patient notes written prior to the prevalence of computers. GPs must keep them in perpetuity.
The eLGs perfectly addresses today’s drive for efficiency, cost reduction and improved service in the NHS – all the things that the Government’s QIPP agenda is pushing. It is secure, easy to set up, cost effective and crucially an operational cost rather than a capital one which makes budgeting straightforward. It is a fully managed end-to-end service to collect, digitise, archive and host Lloyd George patient records held by GPs in their surgeries. It frees up space, improves efficiency, makes patient information instantly available for staff, removes risk, and saves GPs money on administration. It is a pioneering service in the NHS, delivered in partnership with NHS BSA and UKCloud.
Other commercial companies have offered services where they take away records, store them off site and then GPs request notes back when they need them. But this is an imperfect, half-way-house solution. It’s like having an outsourced photocopying service. It doesn’t solve the problem of managing records long term given paper degrades, and then there is the inevitable time lag getting information back or a premium to pay if something is required immediately. Furthermore, once the record is received even if it’s a PDF, GPs have to store it somewhere and have a process to govern this.
The eLGs solution is the first of its kind in the NHS and was created in partnership between CCube Solutions who supplied the eLG solution based on their award-winning electronic document management software in widespread use in secondary care, and NHS BSA who is providing the scanning services, and UKCloud providing the data hosting services.
While Lloyd George notes are not used in day-to-day patient consultations, it’s obligatory for practices to keep them as they are often required by GPs when reports are written for solicitors, insurers and so on, and access to historical patient information is needed.
Staff at a typical GP practice access the hosted system using a standard Internet browser – there is no need to install any software at the GP practice. Once logged in, the user will search for and select a patient. The eLGs portal displays a number of chapters to make it easier for the user to navigate through the digital record and display the required document via an integrated document viewer. The system is intuitive and typically requires about 10 minutes of training to use.
A typical practice has, on average 10,000 Lloyd George wallets. The average wallet size is 132 pages, ie. an average of 1,320,000 pages per practice. Such a practice may spend half a day per a week moving and copying files which, over a year can work out to c.£2,000 in admin costs. With eLGs, everything is available online. If a record is to be sent to any external agencies/parties, there is no need to print – the data can be exported using encrypted devices.
