Scotland opens almost paperless hospital

A new £100m hospital which supports a virtually paperless environment has been opened by the NHS Glasgow and Clyde Health Board in Scotland.

The Stobhill hospital, which is expected to treat more than 400,000 patients a year is one of the largest hospitals in Scotland, has implemented Orion Health’s electronic health record system.

Scott Hendry, Glasgow and Clyde’s portal programme manager said the critical starting point for enabling an electronic health record (EHR) was providing the ability to exchange medical data between a multitude of locations and providers.

The board chose Orion’s Concerto portal technology so that clinicians can access patient medical records wherever they are in the hospital.

Hendry said: “At the time of selection, Concerto was the only solution that could provide a single unified view of the information retrieved from the multiplicity of systems that we have in Glasgow and Clyde. That made our decision easy. We currently send 2000 medical documents and 1000 referral letters daily.

“People see the benefit in moving away from paper, but to work, a portal needs to be as effective and as easy as a paper-based system. The Concerto Portal is very intuitive, which plays a critical part in encouraging acceptance by the clinical staff.”

Since the NHS Greater Glasgow Health Board was formed in 2006 it has prioritised making it easier for it thousands of providers across facilities to access patient medical records electronically.

Paul Viskovich, Orion Health’s president of North American and EMEA operations said that the Glasgow and Clyde regional project is Scotland’s largest and most ambitious healthcare modernisation programme.

He said: “The dedication to providing better healthcare services for this large patient population is groundbreaking.

“We are sending about 30,000 demographic messages and 2000 documents every day and users are accessing in excess of 4,000 patient documents a day. The health board has plans to connect all ambulatory care hospitals and acute sites in the health boards region, and we look forward to partnering with them to meet these large-scale EHR goals.”

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