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Staffordshire Leads the Way
More flexible printing is allowing
a UK hospital to deliver better service to patients.
Staffordshire
General Hospital has
become one of the first in the country to implement the UK Government’s
partial patient booking proposals, thanks to a system supplied
by IDS.
Partial patient booking is designed
to give patients more choice about appointment times, while
reducing the number of missed appointments.
The application is just one example
of the extra flexibility Staffordshire has derived from its
new SpoolQ system
from IDS, which has allowed it to offer a much better service
to patients.
Like many hospitals around the UK,
Staffordshire uses the IRC PAS system for patient administration,
running on an ICL mainframe, and sends out around 1,000 letters
a day.
"As well as giving a better service,
the system should help to cut down the number of missed appointments"
Until recently all letters to
patients were created on impact printers with little or
no opportunity to do any special formatting.
"We realised our letters
weren't particularly good, but it was a challenge
to find a system that would link into our mainframe, with
its proprietary connections," says Jack Barber, the
PAS Services Manager for Staffordshire General. "The
SpoolQ system allows us to connect a modern laser printer
to the mainframe, and to personalise the letters. For instance,
we have two sites – Cannock and Stafford – so
we may need to put a map on the back of the letter to show
people where to go."
The Lexmark laser printers, in
conjunction with Formscape forms composition software and
SpoolQ, can also produce letters that are properly designed
to emphasise important information.
With the previous system, patients
could often fail to notice special instructions. "We
could not highlight fields or even do proportional spacing
and it looked very old-fashioned," says Barber. "It’s
no wonder patients don’t turn up some
time!"
As well as giving a better service,
the system should help to cut down the number of missed
appointments, which waste doctors' time and prevent
other people from taking the slot. "The beauty of the new
SpoolQ system", states Barber, "is that it has enabled Staffordshire
General Hospital to introduce the improvements without
changing a line of code in the mainframe system."
Find Out More
Web Page: SpoolQ
Telephone: + 44 (0)1460 55451
Email: info@idocsol.com
Contact Form
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