GP practices across Middleton adopt new technology to improve patient care

Eight GP practices in Middleton, Manchester, have adopted Lexacom Digital Dictation to support effective joint working and improve patient services across the town.

The practices are already working together on a number of initiatives and this latest move is designed to improve overall efficiency, share services and speed up referral processing times.

Implementing Lexacom across all practices is an important step forward in the Middleton Demonstrator’s plan to share resources effectively – a Demonstrator is a group of practices able to bid for funding for joint projects to improve healthcare.

As a cloud-based system, Lexacom will enable the practices to share secretarial resources to help manage workload peaks and troughs, with each individual practice able to keep track of progress on their referrals and other correspondence.

One practice is already making effective use of Lexacom Mobile, which integrates fully with the Lexacom 3 office system. Dr Jiva, GP and clinical lead for the Demonstrator, said: “With the Lexacom Mobile app, my iPad is becoming a mobile clinic, giving me access to all the tools I would have at the surgery when I’m on home visits. Any referral letters I might have to dictate when out seeing patients can be processed as quickly and securely as if I were in my consulting room.”

The eight practices share a seven-day GP service provided by local doctors. By using Lexacom across all practices, the evening and weekend doctors will be able to record any referrals or notes via Lexacom Mobile, and send the dictation directly to the relevant practice for processing as soon as the surgery is open.

“Currently, locums have to type notes into the clinical system for our secretaries to interpret when the surgery is open. In my experience, doctors tend to provide more information when talking rather than typing. With Lexacom Mobile, not only can we ensure every referral is processed promptly, the doctor will be able to provide all the relevant clinical details quickly and easily.” Dr Jiva said.

With all eight practices using the Emis clinical system to record patient information, Lexacom was the natural choice, being the only digital dictation software approved by Emis. Lexacom integrates fully with the clinical system, automatically including the correct patient information with each dictation, reducing the risk of errors and ensuring an accurate audit trail.

Lexacom managing director, Dr Andrew Whitely, said: “As a GP myself, my focus in developing Lexacom has been to continually find ways to make it easier for doctors to provide top quality services to patients. We are delighted to be working with the Middleton practices and look forward to working with them to maximise the benefits Lexacom can bring both in improving document processing times and in sharing back-office functions.”

Lexacom is already in use at the Peterloo Medical Centre and is now being rolled out across the remaining practices in the Middleton Demonstrator. Olympus hardware is also being installed, which integrates seamlessly with Lexacom 3.