Dartford & Gravesham NHS Trust
SRC WinScribe digital dictation assures transparent workflow and cuts costs
SRC is assisting state-of-the-art NHS Trust Dartford & Gravesham to achieve complete control and transparency of the digital dictation workflow in order to improve efficiencies and free up staff time to enhance patient care.
Background
Darent Valley Hospital is a modern state-of-the-art hospital located in the Southeast of England. The hospital provides an extensive range of acute, mainly hospital-based health services to the local community and neighbouring districts. It is particularly proud to offer patients safe, comfortable and clean surroundings in which to recover and boasts warm, friendly and professional staff. The hospital's proficient team of around 1900 staff provide care for approximately 200,000 patients every year in its 460 beds and provides a full range of day-patient, in-patient and out-patient care. The Trust’s annual budget is around £116 million.
Business Drivers
Many NHS Trusts are looking to deploy new technologies that help streamline and accelerate processes. The implementation of digital dictation Trust wide to over 450 users is a key part of Dartford and Gravesham’s financial recovery programme, which is looking to achieve savings in excess of £4 million.
Rob Thompson, Assistant Director of Service Development at Dartford & Gravesham NHS Trust explains the key business drivers: “The main business drivers for adopting digital dictation was to improve the efficiency of the clinical administration process, address the challenges presented by 18 weeks and to achieve cost benefits of over £250,000 in the first year.”
Although business drivers are a key consideration there were also technology drivers, as Rob Thompson adds: “The main technology drivers for choosing the SRC solution was mainly to replace an obsolete technology and eliminate tapes getting mislaid and whole clinics needing to be redone.”
SRC digital dictation solution
The SRC WinScribe solution will automatically manage the distribution and prioritisation of dictations and will enable team working and a more efficient method of processing the routing dictations and typed documents. The solution also enables users to mange their workload by providing comprehensive information that relates to individual dictations.
Speaking about the solution Rob says: “The software itself is easy and friendly to users so there has been a rapid adoption.”
The decision to adopt the SRC digital dictation solution followed a rigorous evaluation process, which included reviewing solutions from four providers as part of a formal tender process. From the presentations and evaluation process the Trust unanimously selected SRC.
“A significant factor in choosing SRC as the provider was the proven track record of providing solutions in the health sector, and their understanding of the complexities of the Trust clinical administration environment” says Rob Thompson.
Key services
Although SRC installed, trained and supported the complete solution including hardware and software, Rob Thompson points to a number of factors of the relationship with SRC that enabled a rapid deployment; “The training provided by SRC has been divided between authors and secretaries and specific training has been provided to administrators. When we have needed to go to SRC with queries the helpline has been answered promptly, it has always been manned and the responses have been constructive and helpful.”
Results
The benefits of Dartford and Gravesham’s new SRC WinScribe solution will range from time savings through to improving the ability for authors to communicate more effectively with secretaries. Rob Thompson says: “The main results from the deployment to date have been time savings in the processing of dictation work and the benefits gained from supervisors being able to manage dictation work across the Trust.”
With the SRC solution providing a transparent workflow that automatically and securely transfers information between authors and secretaries and which enables supervisors to review and redistribute dictations to avoid backlogs the Trust can improve efficiencies for all users, which in turn benefits the patient.
Rob Thompson concludes: “Secretaries can for the first time see on screen the volume, length and priority of dictations, which means they can organise their responsibilities much more effectively and efficiently. For urgent dictations we have seen a dramatic reduction in turnaround times, in that work can be transcribed while the actual clinic where that work has come from is still in process. So, we can see we’ve saved at least 24 hours if not more. We are also confident that as user’s proficiency and competency improves there will be further savings in turnaround times.”
