Document management specialist PCTI has announced the deployment of its electronic document transfer solution to 1,000 GP practices.
The company said its EDT solution, which enables GP practices to receive documents electronically from multiple trusts and other service providers, has also been ordered by a further 300 practices.
PCTI said the annual savings to the NHS could be as much as £2.6m, assuming each of the 1,000 practices receives an average of 100 letters a day via EDT.
Dave Mills, patient services and IT manager at Dr Anscombe and Partners in Oxford, said that his practice received between 50 and 100 out-of-hours reports each Monday.
He added: “By receiving these electronically using EDT we have removed the scanning process and as a result saved our practice an hour in time on busy Monday mornings.”
In June last year, PCTI announced that it was offering the software free of charge to its customers on standard support, which the company said amounted to a saving per practice of £750.
Dr Glyn Hayes, clinical director of PCTI, said EDT not only saved on administration time but also ensured that the right information was on the doctor’s desktop when it was needed, during a consultation.
He added: “From a clinical perspective I believe the deployment of EDT will help with a reduction in transcription errors and provide earlier and safer intervention with patients returning back to the community.”
Hospitals have had a contractual requirement to deliver discharge summaries within 24 hours since April 2010 although not all are meeting the target.
Ric Thompson, managing director of PCTI, said there had been a fantastic response to EDT and said trusts adopting the solution achieved an immediate return on investment, helping them to meet targets such as the Quality Innovation Productivity and Prevention initiative.