01 October 2008

37 thousand

Dr Grumble has had to abandon his early morning work. The reason is that when he opened the patients' notes they were all empty. Some clerk somewhere has opened a new file on each patient. Not a temporary file but a new file. That means that each of these patients has two sets of notes. One set is completely empty. It also means Dr Grumble cannot make decisions this morning. Dr Grumble was so angry he told a passing surgeon. To Dr Grumble's amazement, according to the surgeon, a neighbouring hospital is even worse. There they have 37,000 sets of duplicate notes. It is simply not acceptable. It is dangerous. Dr Grumble used to put each empty set of notes into an envelope and send it to a manager to make his point but they got fed up with him. So he has now given up. Like everybody else.

3 comments:

madsadgirl said...

It makes you wonder whether new admin staff get given any training whatsoever. Of course, all of this adds to the delays that occur in patients being seen, and wastes your valuable time. But, we all know who will get the blame if targets don't get met. Yes, it's the doctors who are at fault again.

Anonymous said...

Somehow this calls to mind the old adage:

"Pay peanuts - get monkeys"

...though I dare say there is a highly paid suit charged with being "Patient Record Service Delivery Manager".

Wonder if that person will suffer any adverse comsequences of Dr G's complaints?

The Shrink said...

You'd think with 18 week waits etc that cancelling clinical activity 'cause medical records cocked up would be a hanging offence, no? It is in the acute Trust in my corner!