Potential Savings

Data recently released by the NHS Litigation Authority shows that more than £1 billion of costs were settled during 2010-11. Whilst much of this expenditure is related to legitimate claims it is an unfortunate consequence of our increasingly litigious society that there are also an increasing number of dubious claims.

Challenges

The most common issues we tend to hear relating to complaints include:

• Sourcing clinical records
• Reviewing clinical notes
• Difficulty gaining an overview of treatment provided

Solution

Therapy Manager allows you to:

• Capture all patient records in a relational database.
• Time and date stamp each entry against the clinician
• Convert all records to “Read Only”non-modifiable status within 1 working day of completion
• Easily view every aspect of each episode of care

The Patient Summary in Therapy Manager provides an overview of referral details, waiting list data, appointment details, completed assessments, clinical notes, equipment ordered for the patient, letters sent/received on behalf of the patient, and discharge summaries.

Patient records can be maintained on-site and are instantly search-able as soon as a complaint is raised without the need to physically trawl through paper archives. Each episode can be navigated quickly and easily so that the individuals investigating the complaint can quickly get to the required information.

Business Case

By using Therapy Manager to aid the complaints process, you could expect cost savings resulting from:

• Reduced administrative time pulling and searching through clinical notes and documentation
• Reduced clinical time qualifying notes and assessments
• Reduced management time sorting and finding the relevant information
• Reduction in paper printing costs for submission to solicitors/medical records departments
  

We estimate that it would take no more than 10 minutes to source all of the required information to deal with a complaint.