“Sonic Healthcare UK’s approach to innovation and problem solving has once again been demonstrated by the completion of a project that has made ordering radiology reports easier for thousands of London GPs, and which has saved a Trust a considerable amount of money”, John Rickett, ICT Programme Manager, explains.
“Having reached the end of its functional life, Barnet Hospital faced a radical overhaul of its radiology ordering system. The required upgrade would have been very expensive, potentially disruptive, and would have taken time and resources. Sonic Healthcare UK was already providing pathology reporting through our tQuest system, and we saw that radiology reporting could be provided by the same system.”
Race Against Time
Having come up with, and agreeing the solution, the team, consisting of John, Nilesh Khimani, Matthew Russell and Fergus Johnstone, with support from Ben Lynch, Mark Barretto and a team from Royal Free IT and radiology departments, then had to devise a migration plan in the very ambitious timescale of two months.
In fact, the implementation took just 54 working days from contract signature to over 100 GP practices going live on the new system on 16 May.
The successful programme now means that around 2,500 GPs in the North Central London area can order X Rays, CT scans and ultrasounds electronically. The huge advantage both for GPs and patients is that pathology and radiology orders are on the same system and can be ordered at the same time.
Further Roll Out
A second phase is now in progress which will extend access to a further 50 GP practices which had previously been unable to order radiology electronically.
The system has also been designed to allow it to be extended to other Trusts if required, and will allow for a wider range of radiology reports.
Pav Asghar, Royal Free London’s Operations Manager for Radiology said: “We were very pleased by the solution offered by the Sonic Healthcare UK team and delighted that we were able to achieve our tight deadline. It is fantastic that we were able to maintain our electronic ordering and results system for our GPs. The ability to add further GP practices is very significant and will be a huge improvement for our GPs and the imaging department enabling us to provide a better service for all our patients. We also look forward to making improvements to the requesting and results system.”