Fast, accurate referrals benefit patients at the Bartholomew Medical Group

The Bartholomew Medical Group in East Yorkshire has appointed Lexacom digital dictation to provide a faster, more accurate and secure way of generating patient referral letters in their practice – boosting processing times as well as staff morale.

With their previous tape-based system, the Bartholomew Medical Group was facing a backlog of referral letters, which was causing frustrations for both patients and the team. The old system was fraught with problems ranging from unclear sound to difficulty in locating urgent dictations.

Business Manager, Carol Hunt, said: “The secretaries would often be asked to type an urgent referral letter, which could be anywhere on a tape.  They had no way to find it other than forwarding and rewinding until they reached the right one.  Plus, some doctors would hand over tapes each day, while others would wait a while, so there were often big peaks and troughs in workload from some GPs.  We were facing a huge backlog of work, which was extremely difficult for everyone.”

Following a recommendation from a local practice and a successful free trial period, the Bartholomew Medical Group decided to install Lexacom software alongside Olympus hardware.

Carol continued: “Lexacom has enabled us to catch up with the backlog of work, which has had a phenomenal impact on the morale of the team and has resulted in a much better service for patients.  I’m now able to monitor workloads more effectively, and I can see we are working more efficiently as a practice.”

Lexacom integrates seamlessly with their clinical system, SystmOne, ensuring the correct patient details are automatically selected at the time of the dictation. Not only that, the relevant clinical specialism is included, making it much clearer and referrals can be processed more easily.

Office Manager, Vanessa Earl is delighted with the change Lexacom has made: “Our new Lexacom system has really lifted the mood.  Now, it’s really clear to see how many recordings are waiting to be transcribed and we have started setting ourselves targets, which gives us a real sense of achievement when we reach those goals.  We certainly wouldn’t want to go back to tapes now.”

Lexacom Managing Director, Dr Andrew Whiteley, said:

“We’re very pleased to be working with the Bartholomew Medical Group. With practices under growing pressure to work more efficiently, GPs are increasingly looking to digital systems to help improve working practices and offer greater flexibility. It is very rewarding to see that Lexacom is not only saving them time but reducing the strain on their team. ”