End of an era as Mount Vernon medical record library closes
It is the end of an era this week for the medical records library at Mount Vernon which shuts its doors for the final time.
The milestone moment on Thursday (19 October) afternoon comes amid the ongoing Electronic Document Management (EDM) scanning project which is seeing patient records being transformed into digital form and eliminating the need for paper records.
The process strengthens patient data security and will enable notes to be viewed by more than one clinician at the same time, allow records to be shared between hospitals, and provides rapid access to relevant patient information at the point of care for staff, for quick and informed decision making.
The library at Mount Vernon, which housed between an estimated 60,000 and 80,000 records, marks a significant step forward as we move into the future with the planned transformation into a new state-of-the-art hospital.
Divisional service manager Nadine King said:
"It was quite a vibrant hub at Mount Vernon. We had two to three staff there working on a daily basis but as digital scanning has taken over in the last 18 months, we don't actually need to have a hub there. We've got an annex and a little library which will just hold anything that we need to hold for a period, but we don't actually need to have staff on site anymore.
"We'll bring the staff over to Hillingdon and just have the little annexes and probably send someone over there [to Mount Vernon] once a week to do any kind of work that we need to do."
From Monday (23 October), the Hillingdon medical hub will be open from 8am to 4pm Monday to Friday for anyone needing to access records. It will be closed over lunch on these days, though, between 12pm and 1pm.
The new hospital will be a digitally enhanced building and the EDM project is a key part of helping the Trust become paper-lite, thus increasing efficiencies, freeing up space and reducing costs.
Robbie Cline, joint chief information officer for The Hillingdon Hospitals and London North West, said:
"This project is an important part of our journey to remove the need to move large amounts of paper around our organisation. By scanning our exisiting paper notes and any new paper that is created, clinical teams will have instant access to all parts of their patients' medical records."