Out with the old, in with the new

Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary is saying goodbye to tapes and hello to the many benefits of digital dictation with help from Voice Technologies.

The hospital is the first in NHS Dumfries and Galloway to receive hardware such as digital dictation devices and WinScribe software in a secure environment to help speed up waiting times. Roll out began at the start of the year.

Galloway Community Hospital, and peripheral sites such as heath centres, will also receive the technology.

“We expect the technology to provide a secure environment and speed up waiting times by making dictation much smoother,” said Carolyn Malcolm of NHS Dumfries and Galloway. Voice Technologies also held training sessions and promoted the new technology.

New system improves process and productivity

The Histopathology Laboratories at Wishaw General and Monklands Hospitals in Lanarkshire are reaping the benefits of a new digital dictation system from Voice Technologies.

Despite all the efforts of the secretarial staff, workflow and prioritisation were difficult to manage with increasing workloads and new target turnarounds for patients’ treatment.

Yet within a month of the system installation, turnaround times had greatly improved and staff pressures were alleviated.

Elaine Gilmour, PA to the Clinical Director of Laboratories, said: “We occasionally had a significant number of reports waiting to be typed – now everything is up to date.

“Our secretaries love the new system. They’re delighted that they can spend their time more productively, rather than trawling through the old-fashioned analogue tapes.”

The Government’s waiting time directives say patients should start receiving their treatment within a certain number of weeks.

Elaine added: “By the time patients are referred to hospital and have a biopsy taken, we’re under pressure to respond quickly as we approach the time when they should be coming back to start their treatment.

“Departments were then calling us looking for patients’ results. Our secretaries were having to search through tapes to find the particular report which took a fair amount of time.”

Not any more. “Since we went digital, we can find this information in a few seconds.”

Diagnoses from the hospitals’ 13 consultant pathologists are sent online for processing, said Elaine.

“There’s no waiting for a tape to arrive at the end of the day with 10 or 15 reports on it. Each report is sent to a pool of secretarial staff as soon as the pathologist has made his or her diagnosis and is marked as a priority if required. There’s no chance either of a tape being erased by accident or lost in transit.”

The flexibility of transferring report production between staff and hospital laboratories has a significant impact on the speed of report availability for patients.