Supporting paperless working at Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust

Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust is the first organisation to choose Docman as a trustwide electronic workflow system for clinical and non-clinical documentation.

The trust will utilise Docman EDM to process and track documentation to standardise the communication process for its 3,500 employees across 71 sites.

The project covers Oxleas’ five directorates and is working with three clinical commissioning groups that include over 150 GP practices.

The solution will electronically manage documentation including internal post, mental health reports, care plans, documents between directorates, medication reviews, CPA, request for further information, assessment letters, DNA letters, change of medication forms, discharge summaries and encounter reports.

The project will also utilise Docman Hub, the solution used by over 100 NHS organisations to send and receive clinical and non-clinical documentation to and from GPs.

Laurelle Morgan-Bruce, programme manager of clinical transformation at Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust, said: “We identified that the process of managing paper, email and faxes between our services and sending information to GP practices could be improved. Paper would be sent to practices and around our services, creating delays in delivering information to the point of care when it is needed most.”

“Our trust required an electronic document transfer solution to support our paperless strategy and create time and cost savings.

“By going electronic we will have complete visibility of our documentation. The project will provide a clear indication of the number of documents sent across our health economy and provide access to exactly where a letter is in the system. This will be extremely valuable for reporting and understanding exactly what information is being transferred where and when. Information will be delivered to the point of care and everyone will have access to the information they need, when they need it most.”

Ric Thompson, managing director of Docman, added: “We are delighted to be working with Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust as our first customer to utilise Docman as a trustwide electronic document workflow system. We are really excited Docman is being utilised by a growing number of NHS organisations, supporting them to become paperless.

“Organisations implementing Docman Hub to send and receive clinical and non-clinical documentation quickly realise significant time and cost savings. Oxleas will utilise Docman Hub to receive information directly into Docman’s intuitive workflow and benefit from an end-to-end document workflow process across their health economy. The trust will also deliver clinical correspondence to its surrounding GPs in a fast and efficient way to completely remove paper.”

The project aims to:

• Utilise Docman Hub to send and receive documentation from GPs and realise savings on printing and postage costs
• Implement and utilise Docman as an electronic management system to workflow documentation around the trust
• Provide an end-to-end audit trail for the transfer of clinical documentation in a two-way environment
• Link trust systems to Docman Hub with a single link to the GP practice
• Enable GPs to receive documentation from Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust using a method integrated within the existing Docman GP product
• Integrate with the Trust Clinical System (RIO) in a seamless way providing smooth transmission of documents from system to system