In article <[log in to unmask]>, Helen Deborah Vecht
<[log in to unmask]> writes
>This is not quite an answer, but today has been so catastrophic that
>I write about the situation only condemn such a system in the context
>of a pull-blown ED.
>
>I work in Edgware Urgent Treatment Centre, which shares reception,
>hardware, software and Triage with the Edgware Walk-In Centre housed
>on the same premises.
>
>We are basically using Knightowl GP software and running it on
>Windows 95 computers. The Walk-In Centre effectively work without
>paper, though print hard copies for the purposes of Child Protection.
>
>We are seeing about 100 patients per day.
>
>The computer crashed at around 4pm today, when the waiting room was
>packed. We had no record of who had been booked in, who had been seen
>by our Triage nurse and how long any of the patients (or 'clients'
>for the Walk-In Centre) had been waiting.
>
Sorry to hear about your experience Helen - but I feel I must respond to
this
I was tempted to forward your message to GP-UK where there are many GPs
keeping only electronic records
The truth is that primary care is years ahead of secondary care in the
use of IT to facilitate care
My records are purely electronic (except for the reams of paper of
different shapes, sizes, thickness, legibility, fonts, staples etc that
the hospitals send us)
My appointments system is purely electronic
My prescribing/repeat prescribing is electronic
We occasionally have power-cuts - so a generator is necessary for us
(most hospitals have these of course)
I have a disaster recovery plan. Data is backed up daily and goes off-
site, the appointments back themselves up hourly.
The other issue is to decide how much the occasional, recoverable
disaster should affect our adoption of systems that may increase our
overall level of care and facilitate education etc
Let's look at it the other way around. Would it be reasonable to argue
against using paper records if you had just had a fire overnight and
lost years of patient data when if you had had electronic records then
the backup would have been off site and so the most you would have lost
would have been a days worth of info?
It sounds like whoever is in charge of things at the centre you work at
needs to look more closely at disaster planning, but also that one hitch
should not be allowed to affect the bigger picture.
How often do written notes go missing? Do you call for an electronic
system to solve this every time they do? ;-)
The picture in Primary Care is so much different to that in the
secondary sector - but hopefully the hospitals will catch up soon :)
Cheers
--
Jel Coward
http://www.wildmedic.org
http://www.wemsi.org
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'There's no such thing as bad weather - just bad clothing"
Anon Norwegian
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