Feature by Radar Healthcare
Paperwork is a part of our everyday lives, but it can be risky and unsuitable for a healthcare organisation trying to promote an agile culture. It can even be dangerous, as we have seen through examples of lost patient data and records that have surfaced over time.
As part of the NHS Long Term Plan, the ‘Paperless 2020’ initiative required all secondary care organisations to become digital by 2023. The goal was to improve patient and healthcare outcomes by increasing interoperability.
Many setbacks, including, shortfalls in IT infrastructure, delayed NHS funding, and the COVID-19 pandemic, hindered the scheme. But this doesn’t mean that the healthcare industry has given up. Going paperless has provided tangible benefits to many NHS trusts across the country, resulting in increased security, finer accuracy, more efficiency, and improved reporting.
Some of our partners, in the NHS and beyond, have moved to fully digital methods after realising how their specific organisations could improve, not only by ditching paper, but by centralising data for all their staff.
Orri: consolidating systems to manage risk
Specialist eating disorders treatment service, Orri, places a high priority on patient safety and risk management. With Radar Healthcare, Orri made the necessary switch from a siloed Excel spreadsheet, to an integrated system that allowed them to automatically track and manage risk across their entire organisation.
Orri was able to link their electronic medication system and their bespoke management tool to Radar Healthcare, allowing them to store all patient and staff data in one place. After moving their patient events and HR documents online, Orri’s staff now have access to correct and up-to-date information from wherever they are, be that their London clinic or off-site.
Within a year of beginning their digital journey, the CQC named Radar Healthcare as a contributing factor to Orri’s Outstanding rating in their 2021 audit, highlighting the success of their digitisation. COO Lucy Inmonger commented on their move from paper to digital methods: “It has really transformed the business.”
Shropdoc: reporting on the go
With approximately 3500 square miles under their care, Shropdoc, an out-of-hours primary care provider, needed all their staff – especially their Primary Care Assistants (PCAs), “the eyes and ears” of the organisation – to be able to record incidents when they actually happen.
With Radar Healthcare, the PCAs could record events on the go and be confident that everyone across Shropdoc would be aware of what had happened the previous week, that day, or even a few minutes ago. On top of incident management and complaints handling, Shropdoc now have a place to store more non-clinical assets such as an electronic vehicle inspection list – removing any need for manual paper trails.
Walsingham Support: from two weeks’ work to two minutes
Walsingham Support used to record events through paper forms, passing those to the corresponding team, who would then review it and send another form across as confirmation. With Radar Healthcare, they can now record every event on the system and make links between events and incidents to track patterns to improve patient and staff outcomes.
Before using Radar Healthcare, reporting within the organisation was often very time-consuming. With multiple locations across England and Wales, it would sometimes take two weeks to put a report together to give an overview of the whole organisation. But our Analytics module, which uses up-to-date data from across their many sites, allowed senior management to prepare reports in just a few minutes.
Avery Healthcare: growing with the organisation
As one of the largest care organisations in the country, Avery Healthcare needed a system that could accommodate their 60 care homes as well as more care home and services in the future.
Scalability was one of the main reasons Avery Healthcare began looking for a system to replace their own in-house software. By working with Radar Healthcare, they’ve created a system just for them which is constantly being improved by working with industry and healthcare experts.
‘Going paperless’ isn’t an overnight change. It takes planning, strategy, and engagement to succeed. But having a consolidated system that does all the work that paper forms do, keeps data safe and secure in one place, and is always accurate and up to date, is a huge step towards improve patient safety – something we are all striving for.
Radar Healthcare supports 70,000 healthcare professionals who have gone paperless across the world. Get in touch if you think we could help you too.
