Electronic documents can now be instantly accessed from the Queen Elizabeth Hospital's own laboratory software, saving hours of precious time
The Queen Elizabeth Hospital is one of the biggest in the Greenwich, UK, area and serves a growing population of some 220,000 residents.
The hospital's pathology department processed approximately 2000 test request cards each week.
The cards were indexed and filed manually in hard copy form, which was a labour-intensive process, often prone to problems and errors.
In addition the cards occupied valuable storage space and several cards were lost during this manual procedure.
Critically, patient care was at risk if clerical staff misread or mis-interpreted details prior to data entry into the laboratory system.
The processing of specimens within the laboratory was delayed and the precious time of highly skilled staff throughout the hospital was lost.
CMS Software recommended its TextStor document management system to store electronic copies of the cards.
A barcode attached to each card allows the pathology department to automatically scan and file electronic copies of the card.
Clinical details can also be interpreted by qualified staff, providing a much-improved customer service.
Queen Elizabeth Hospital has recently rolled out the software to the histology, cytology and microbiology departments.
The documents can be viewed securely and simultaneously from more than one desktop and a complete audit trail is provided.
