The NHS Scotland eHealth Strategy 2011-2017 explicitly states that NHS Boards should ‘by 2014 have well established programmes to replace paper with digital equivalents’. In response to this, and building on previous eHealth investments, NHS Lanarkshire proposes to eliminate the majority of its paper health records over the next 10 years as part of its programme to implement comprehensive electronic patient records. This will be achieved through scanning and digitisation of both past and current health records. These ‘electronic’ records will be easily available at the point of care through a clinical portal.
This project will have substantial effect on staffing numbers especially within Health Records in the 3 Acute General Hospitals, but it will also see changes to Portering requirements, Medical Secretaries workload and many other areas. Current baseline figures that have still need to be fully reviewed/agreed suggest staffing levels in Health Records may reduce by up to 70 WTE.
To accommodate the proposed central scanning unit, the RMS service currently based in Hairmyres will be moved to Kirklands leading to a large number of staff being asked to re-locate to Bothwell from East Kilbride or if this isn’t a viable option, these staff being placed on the redeployment list.
UNISON stewards are fully involved in the staff consultation that is currently taking place until the 31st March 2012 and will be highly involved in all project boards and project sub-group that get set-up following this consultation period to support our members during this project.
