Digitising paper records for 24/7 availability at Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust

ReStart helps Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust transition from paper-based patient records to an automated Electronic Document Management System.

Background: Supporting mental health care in the community

Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (LYPFT) are leading the way in mental health, learning disability and neurodiversity care. LYPFT provide 39 clinical services for patients, across 66 sites. The Trust has over 3,000 staff, who are treating 1.5 million patients every year.

Whilst the Trust has 407 beds in the inpatient wards, most of the care they provide takes place in the community – either within, or as close to people’s own homes, as possible. This meant that access to patient data, from any location, was critical to delivering patient care.

Objective: Digitally available patient data at the point of care

The overall aim of the Electronic Document Management System (EDMS) programme was to remove the challenge of managing legacy paper records, to improve patient care by having medical history digitally available 24/7, with concurrent availability at any of the Trust’s 66 sites.

The paper-based system was outdated and not sustainable. The Trust had to find a more efficient solution that enabled staff to access the right information, at the right time and place. Specialist interoperability was sought to resolve complex data compatibility issues which can hinder many healthcare integration projects.

The solution:  Facilitating workflows between EPR and EDMS

LYPFT needed help to integrate its newly acquired EDMS Miziac’s Mediviewer, with its existing Electronic Patient Record (EPR), CareDirector. ReStart provided specialist knowledge and integration skills focused around data transformation and healthcare systems integration.

The EDMS MediViewer platform enables Trust users to view a complete history of every patient and search for key clinical documents.

Challenges:  Streamlined data mapping and document conversion

Early on in the implementation, it became apparent that the current data feeds from the Trust’s EPR were incompatible with the message format required by the new EDMS solution, both in terms of data structure, and encoded data.

Furthermore, with the EPR generating more than 30 different file formats, a solution was needed to convert all documents into one single format, facilitating smoother integration with the EDMS.

To resolve the data compatibility issues, ReStart began with a detailed gap analysis to identify the incompatible code sets between the two systems. Then leveraging the expertise of integration engines, ReStart was able to develop custom transformation logic within the Trust’s Qvera Integration Engine (QIE) enabling the EPR messages to be understood by the Mediviewer EDMS.

As PDF was the Mediviewer format of choice, ReStart also implemented a document converter solution to safely transform all unsupported file formats into PDF, facilitating a fast, smooth flow of documents into the EDMS document store.

Carl Money, Head of Performance and Informatics, LYPFT adds. “ReStart were crucial to the success of this integration. Waiting months for the EPR supplier would have resulted in a further delay and a prolonged testing process of the upgrade. ReStart quickly identified and deployed tactical fixes to resolve the challenges, saving us time and resource.”

Results: Complete view of all patient clinical information

The Trust now has a digitised document management solution that is fully integrated in real-time, with its EPR. The key benefits include:

• Ensuring patients are getting the right care, in the right place, at the right time.
• Providing a single source of patient information 24/7, across all the Trust’s hospital and community sites.
• Futureproofing data sharing by providing the trust with the tools to manage integration changes within their integration engine, reducing reliance on suppliers.

“Following the implementation of the EDMS we have seen a real positive impact across the Trust. Not only are we spending less money on taxis’ ferrying records around, but we also have all the information about the person, available simultaneously, which is fantastic. By replacing the paper-based system we have also been able to free up rooms which were full of records. These rooms are now being converted into additional clinical spaces.” Carl Money, Head of Performance and Informatics, LYPFT.

Carl further comments: “ReStart has been excellent. Our ReStart Project Manager and Integration Developer are always willing to go the extra mile for us, they provide a great support for our integration environment.”

Geri Boynova, Sales Director, ReStart comments: “We are very pleased to support Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust. Our teams have worked well together, and the results show our clear commitment to resolving interoperability issues. I look forward to continuing to help the Trust on their digital maturity journey.”

More information

To learn more about ReStart please get in touch.