Customer stories
Eliminating lengthy processes with just one click in EMIS Web
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Clinicians at Quorn Medical Centre in Leicestershire are working more efficiently and improving the patient experience by making use of EMIS Web® protocols, concepts and templates.
Having used EMIS Web for five years, Claudia Crabb, assistant practice manager at Quorn Medical Centre, has plenty of experience with the system. It’s meant that she’s become a bit of an expert when it comes to protocols, concepts and templates.
These handy tools automate what can be long, manual processes, instead making entire tasks as simple as pressing a key or clicking a few buttons. And what’s even better, they’re all sat within EMIS Web, ready and waiting to be used. For Quorn Medical Centre, the tools have allowed Claudia and the rest of her team to work smarter, not harder – something that’s improved efficiencies, communication and the patient experience.
It does help to speed up the process during a consultation”
Automating crucial tasks to make them more efficient and accurate
Completing essential admin tasks during consultations can eat into precious diagnostic time, but by using EMIS Web, Quorn Medical Centre has been able to maximise their appointments. As Claudia says, “The GPs use protocols within their consultations. They use synonyms and the auto-predict function for common words that are misspelt. It does help to speed up the process during a consultation.”
The practice has found that they’re supported with larger, practice-wide jobs too, which has proved helpful during a period that’s of particular importance to them: flu season. “Our flu campaign is a big project that we run annually. It brings a lot of money into the practice, so we need to get it right,” notes Claudia.
It does away with any human error and automates a complex process, which saves us a lot of time.”
To ensure that Quorn Medical Centre’s flu campaign runs smoothly, Claudia has designed her own flu protocol. “It questions the user at the start of the protocol and then directs you to the correct vaccine and the correct drug. It does away with any human error and automates a complex process, which saves us a lot of time.
“By the end of the summer we are already starting to prepare our flu campaign, receiving our vaccines and updating the protocol with the new batch numbers and expiry date. The protocol makes sure that the team are using the correct batch numbers and makes a complex process more straightforward.”
Improving patient experience by improving communication
The year-round usefulness of these different tools isn’t only of benefit to the practice’s staff though. In fact, Quorn Medical Centre’s patients are better off too, especially since the tools ensure they’re being communicated with in a way that’s sensitive to their individual requirements.
We can contact our patients in the way that suits their needs.”
“We have designed an accessible information protocol which highlights patients with communication difficulties and then prompts the team to give them information in the format of their choice. Once coded, the protocol generates a pop-up alert for patients that are, for example, registered as blind, for people who need large print or for anyone that requires contact via email because they don’t have access to a phone. It means we can contact our patients in the way that suits their needs.”
The F12 protocol launcher is also a valuable tool. “We use the F12 protocol launcher to generate letters which auto populate with our patients details,” continues Claudia. “It means I don’t have to search our database for that letter each time.”
Much more straightforward than you might imagine
While Quorn Medical Centre and any other practice using EMIS Web can create their own protocols, templates and concepts, Claudia personally prefers to customise her templates. “I don’t tend to create my own but I edit the set ones within EMIS Web so that they work for us,” she explains.
Her insight into EMIS Web is something that’s she’s keen to share with others who can make use of the clinical software’s tools too. Claudia details how, “As a locality all the practices help each other to share information. A couple of years ago we did a presentation on the basic of protocols because we noticed other practices weren’t using them at all.”
Protocols look very daunting but they’re not that hard to do.”
For those practices that similarly aren’t up and running with the automated tools in EMIS Web just yet, Claudia has some sound advice: “Protocols look very daunting but they’re not that hard to do. You can start with something small and build up from there. I developed my knowledge over time and then increased my confidence with bigger and more complicated protocols.
“The EMIS National User Group (NUG) conference is a great place to start learning. They always run basic protocol and template sessions for beginners and also run more advanced workshops for those that are ready to take that step.”
The EMIS NUG – which is user-run but supported by us – not only holds useful workshops but also allows members to feed back their thoughts to us so that we can make enhancements to EMIS Web. It’s part of how we can make sure that things always work the way organisations like Quorn Medical Centre need them to – including their protocols, concepts and templates.