Western Trust makes first move to digitise case note journey
Northern Ireland healthcare provider installs Idox Health’s iFIT logistics management platform
The Western Health and Social Care Trust is one of the first trusts in Northern Ireland to lead the way in medical records management after signing up to Idox Health’s iFIT logistics management platform.
Providing health and social care services to a population of more than 300,000 – approximately 16% of Northern Ireland’s total population; the Western Trust has recently rolled out records management module iRecords at Altnagelvin Hospital, Londonderry. to improve the filing, tracking and retrieval of medical records.
The deployment will support the trust in delivering greater visibility of health record content and usage via the system.
Currently, the trust’s main health records library is at full capacity, with the team overseeing the circulation of over 85,000 health records at any one time.
The solution will manage this challenge by introducing location-based filing which is estimated to free 15% of space and tag-agnostic tracking technologies that accelerate the tracing of records to ensure medical notes are in the right place, at the right time.
iRecords will also be pivotal in helping the trust achieve its 100% availability of health records target without the need for labour-intensive processes.
Teresa Molloy, Western Trust director of performance management and service improvement, said: “The Introduction of iFIT for Case Note Tracking has enabled a smoother workflow of patient case notes across the hospital site and has reduced the resource required for filing of case notes into the Health Records library due to improved process flow.
“The iFIT solution will deliver more benefits to the organisation as a whole and improve accessibility of patient case notes at the point of care to benefit patient quality and safety.”
Overall, the deployment is expected to achieve potential savings of more than £40,000 in the first year, and more than £120,000 in net savings in the first three years of operation through improved productivity and more efficient workflows. It will also support the trust in meeting Scan4Safety and GS1 compliance and ensuring high-quality care for all patients.