Vetting Referrals ICT Systems Development & Clinical Support - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

The Digitalisation of Vetting Referrals

ICT Systems Development & Clinical Support Services Team STREAMLING OUTPATIENT PROCESSES

Project Lead – Sinead Fagan Project Team Members –

Matthew Kybert – ADO ICT Services Nigel Goss – Senior Application Developer Vijaya Kologi – Booking Centre Manager and Team Amos Jacachira (Matron Outpatients) Sinead Fagan (Associate Director Operations CSS) Clinical Lead – Shena George (Ophthalmology Consultant) Senior Sponsor - Shane Degaris (CEO)

@DHealthLDN #digioutpatients

Why did we join the Collaborative?

We wanted to learn what challenges other organisations were facing and how they were overcome. We also wanted to share our ideas and network with our peers.

What were our objectives?

Reduce the number of referrals which teams were unable to locate, resulting in unproductive time used for staff. The vetting process was slow (18 days) and we wanted to reduce the time it took to process a referral from receipt to booking. Increase availability of referrals at the point of care

@DHealthLDN #digioutpatients

How did we understand our baseline?

We looked at the time it took to book an appointment from when the referral was received and undertook an audit. Audit undertaken in November 2017

• 2,500 referrals
• 1,000 paper referrals (40%)
• 380 missing referrals
• 135 referrals are located internally
• 245 not found, requiring contact to referrer requesting a copy to be

faxed or emailed

• 25% of paper referrals are misplaced

@DHealthLDN #digioutpatients

@DHealthLDN #digioutpatients

@DHealthLDN #digioutpatients

Key achievements and outcomes

• Reduced time to process a referral by 50%

( 18 days to 9 days in May 2018 )

• 75% to 100% availability of referrals when required.
• - Referrals for Ophthalmology available electronically

across the Trust (i.e A&E)

• - Referrals vetted increased from 14% to 100%
• - 4% reduction in inappropriate referrals.
• Significant improvement in patient experience as all

information available electronically

• - Improved staff moral - increase time with patients (

instead of looking for referrals )

@DHealthLDN #digioutpatients

Summary

• How do you feel about the Digital Outpatients Collaborative

experience?

• - Learning from other trusts ( pulling referrals from eRS to our digital

clinical records system)

• -Access to digital platforms for sharing & analysing information

Are there other clinics / teams who would benefit from your learnings?

• We are about to role out to other specialities within our own trust
• Happy to share lessons learning with other Trusts