Leicestershire County Council has implemented
an
electronic document management system to provide its social
workers with fast, easy and secure access to adult
social care records over the internet.
The system is based on Morse's Wisdom enterprise content
management technology running on
SQL Server. It is likely to form the basis for a new intranet
and later an internet-based communications system for the
council.
Mick Harris, IT and information manager for adult social care
services at Leicestershire County Council, said the system serves
more than 16,000 social care records to 1,200 social care workers
who deal with adult cases, and another 300 who deal with children's
cases.
"A recent user survey showed that 67% of staff spent less time
looking for data, 61% spent less time filing records, 59% felt
better informed as a result of the system, 89% said they had better
visibility of their case file information, and only 8% would be
happy to go back to the paper system," Harris said.
To speed up response times and add resilience, the council has
installed caching servers at strategic points to service social
care workers, who are increasingly mobile in their work. The
Dell-based system can handle up to 600 concurrent sessions.
Harris said the need for the document management system arose
from a directive from the
Department of Health to put social care records online. "It was
seen as a way to improve delivery of social care services. We
regarded the expense as part of developing the infrastructure to do
that, rather than as a project cost," he said.
Leicestershire County Council has not back-scanned paper
records, and will not do so for adult records, he said. It is,
however, enrolling children's records - a task which should be
completed in April next year. Data can include images and video as
well as text, said Harris.
The document management system allows social care workers to
access records from anywhere in the county, and, as the records are
stored centrally, they are complete and unique. The documents are
most commonly accessed from fixed data links, but the council is
"feeling more confident about wireless", said Harris.
Given the sensitivity of the data, security is tight. All access
is governed by the role of the person with respect to the subject.
"If a user has not got official access to the individual, they
cannot see the record," said Harris.
Similarly, access to documents and folders concerning a case is
restricted to the teams involved and for the necessary tasks.
Electronic records improve care services >>
Electronic records speed care response >>
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