As GP services nationwide continue to face extreme pressures, and with the latest NHS GP patient experience survey showing 16.6% of patients in England wait more than two weeks for an appointment at their local practice – one primary care network thanks its tech partner for freeing up clinician and staff time.
Mendip Vale Medical Group, an NHS Primary Care Network, which serves 85,000 patients across the South West, has used technology from software solutions provider Lexacom to streamline its processes and free up the time of clinicians.
Working across Somerset, Bristol, and Gloucester – covering areas of incredible deprivation, as well as affluent areas with an older population – Mendip Vale Medical Group is the largest merged practice in the South West, with eight sites and a team of 300 staff.
Mendip Vale Medical Group credits Lexacom, an advanced digital dictation and document creation system it has been using for over five years, for saving its clinicians up to an hour a day each.
As the software features secure storage and encryption, it also helps Mendip Vale Medical Group comply with GDPR requirements
Managing Partner at Mendip Vale Medical Group, David Clark, said: "One of the benefits of merging and working at scale is being able to share resources.
"The Lexacom system allows us to share administrative resources across all our sites, enabling us to optimise efficiencies when it comes to patient notes and reports.
"It allows us to plug any gaps in terms of administrative support as regardless of where they are based, our admin staff can ‘dip into the pot’, as they call it."
Prior to using Lexacom, the individual practices relied on tapes. "One of the biggest advantages has been the reduction in the time spent manually handling dictations. In the past, admin staff would have to collect physical tapes, transcribe the contents, and manually file or distribute the documents.
Unlike traditional tape-based dictation, Lexacom allows our clinicians to easily record their notes and instantly share them with the admin team for further processing
"Unlike traditional tape-based dictation, Lexacom allows our clinicians to easily record their notes and instantly share them with the admin team for further processing. This has significantly reduced turnaround times for referral letters, medical reports, and patient records, and has created more efficient and productive workflows overall.
"Additionally, our teams can easily see which transcriptions are in progress, which are outstanding, and how urgent the dictations are, allowing us to allocate our resources to match demand in real-time. As a multi-site organisation, it is a brilliant tool for helping us manage and maximise administrative resources and avoid workload bottlenecks."
Patient care and compliance
As the software features secure storage and encryption, it also helps Mendip Vale Medical Group comply with GDPR requirements.
"Lexacom offers peace of mind when it comes to protecting patient confidentiality. And as it allows us to manage access rights, we can ensure that only authorised staff can view or edit patient records, reducing the risk of data breaches," Clark said.
Embracing technology an imperative for busy practices
Lexacom was founded by Dr Andrew Whiteley in 1999. A practicing GP at the time, he recognised how antiquated and unreliable analogue dictation systems were a blocker to patient care. Determined to build a revolutionary solution to support clinicians, he developed the first incarnation of Lexacom’s digital dictation software. For a quarter of a century, it has been used by GPs and other healthcare providers nationwide to save time and reduce stress.
Dr Joanna King, a GP at Mendip Vale Medical Group, said: "With limited capacity and longer waiting lists for referrals, we find we are holding our patients longer and seeing them more often. Striving to make a difficult job easier by making changes to how we can work more effectively and efficiently is critical in the current climate."
