Morecambe Bay Hospitals Trust under fire: Patients' records store plan (From The Westmorland Gazette)
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Morecambe Bay Hospitals Trust under fire: Patients' records store plan
9:30am Thursday 15th December 2011 in Health
ALMOST £170,000 is to be spent by University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay Trust on a building to store patients’ records.
The move follows criticism over the trust’s handling of outpatients’ case notes, which led to delays in follow-up appointments.
Human resources director Roger Wilson said: “We are increasing the capacity for patient records on the Royal Lancaster Infirmary site by investing £169,500 in a secure 400 square metre building.
“This is a temporary measure whilst we continue to progress plans for a comprehensive electronic document management system for patient case notes.”
Comments(2)
gadgetgadget
says...
10:49am Thu 15 Dec 11
gadgetgadget says...
10:44am Thu 15 Dec 11
They spent thousands on a new computer system to store patient records BUT crucially only input TWO years worth of data for each patient. That is the real cause of this issue - had ALL of the relevant patient data been input initially consultants etc would not have to always rely upon physical pieces of paper.
Nor does a new store prevent those notes from being in the wrong place at the wrong time. That's the real problem not their regular storage !
I don't believe the lack of patient notes being to hand is just responsible for the outpatient appointment follow delays - the patient hands a piece of paper over to the appointments clerks after an appointment has taken place the detail of which should be input into the appointments system to trigger a followup appointment - that doesn't require any more physical notes to be present at the time.
The problem that was actually that the notes that were required DURING a followup appointment were in the wrong place or the system didn't trigger a follow-up at all - that's from personal experience BTW.