Supplies Website

Version One

Largest NHS Trust in the UK is Caring for the Environment and its Patients

The Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust is the largest in the UK with an annual turnover of £1/2 billion. One of the trusts biggest challenges in recent times was the need to reduce the trust's huge paper-burden. With the help of document management specialists, Version One, the Trust is currently saving at least £60,000 per year with projected savings of over £200,000 in 2006/07!

Tightly Integrated into the Trust's Oracle 11i software, Version One's DbArchive, an enterprise wide document management and imaging solution has enabled Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust to make dramatic savings of both time and money by eliminating the printing and filing of outgoing and incoming documents. Archived documents can now be accessed in seconds and by totally removing the need for traditional paper-based document storage, this space can be now be utilised in a more efficient way.

With 220,000 invoices each year amounting to over £210million being captured by Db Archive, Graham Medwell, Information & e-Commerce Manager says “A seamless Integration with our Oracle 11i system has been vital. We needed a system that would be fluid and easy to use and monitor, in-fact DbArchive is that simple and effective, our staff have taken to it like ducks to water”.

Traditionally, internal ordering has been a long and drawn out process for the 15,000 staff members. Previously they would have had to raise a purchase requisition form and post it through the internal mail system, often the orders would get lost or delayed. Sometimes, orders would have taken weeks often months with additional copies being manually produced and photocopied by clerical and medical staff alike.

Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust now has a robust and powerful document management solution in DbArchive, which totally eliminates all of those issues. The result is a “Rapid invoice management process with invoices being traced and tracked through their life-cycle. The Trust now has the power to improve its payment performance with no delays” comments Graham Medwell.

Sales and Marketing Director at Version One, Tony Bray says “We are extremely pleased that Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust are benefiting so quickly from using DbArchive. Because we have many years experience of integrating our solutions into the Oracle environment we knew we could integrate DbArchive quickly and smoothly”.

With the integration of Version One's DbArchive complete, Chris Slater, Head of Supplies at the Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust says “We can now get back to basics, releasing clinical staff to place time back on core activities, reducing the paper-burden and improving patient care”.

Presentation at the Royal Armouries - Leeds 15th June 2005

The Leeds Teaching Hospitals were invited as guest speakers to an event hosted by VersionOne at the Royal Armouries in Leeds on the 25th June 2005. Click here to see the presentation more>....

Version One are the producers of the DbFax and DbMail software which are used within the department. The following press release is taken from Version One's website, concerning the Leeds Teaching Hospitals:

The Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust

As the largest teaching hospitals trust in the country, with a turnover of £475m, The Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust needed to find an automated fax solution that would seamlessly integrate into their Oracle Financials software. They wanted a fax solution that not only saved them administration time, stationery and postage costs, but one that could also be used in a mission critical environment with the opportunity for an upgrade pathway to DbMail internet communications.

The Trust was formed in 1998 when the two former acute Trusts in Leeds - St James's and Seacroft University Hospitals and the United Leeds Teaching Hospitals - were merged. More than 200,000 in- patients were treated by the Trust during 1998/99 - nearly 5,000 (2.5%) more than the previous year. More out-patients were also treated - total attendances rose by over 11,700. "As you can imagine, the provision of supplies is crucial to this huge organisation. We needed to be able to automatically fax purchase orders and be sure that the supplier had received them." Graham Medwell, Information Manager said, "We needed a solution that was mission critical, reliable and confirmed delivery. If not, people's health is at risk and we aren't fulfilling our objectives as an NHS Trust."

Business Objectives

Providing a full range of clinical services including sub-regional, regional and national specialties, Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust was tasked with securing the highest quality of services, promoting teaching and research, whilst taking advantage of economies of scale. Graham Medwell explained, "We wanted a solution that not only provided functionality for our Oracle Financials software, but one that also worked towards our regional and national objectives."

The Past

"We used to manually fax every purchase order, which is faster than posting; however it was still taking us hours every day. Someone had to stand by the fax machine and individually fax all the purchase orders out. Now, with DbFax, we instantly fax out all our purchase orders, reducing stock holding, saving time and money. We're saving tens of thousands of pounds every year." Graham remarked. With DbFax, the process in the Supplies Department is simple. They now order critical supplies for the next day with just a couple of keystrokes. As DbFax is tightly integrated into the Oracle Financials system, it automatically retrieves the relevant information including fax number and contact details, and then automatically faxes the documents out. There are fewer issues with incorrect ordering as DbFax uses a form overlay with the data extracted from Oracle Financials to produce a clear document.

The Best Overall Solution

"We looked at three solutions in total. The objectives of the project were to have greater efficiency, whilst realising the potential for non-pay spend and inventory. We have achieved all our objectives with DbFax. The decision to use Version One products was a cross functional decision within the Finance Division. We decided that, with the centralisation of our services, the most productive use of DbFax was to realise cost savings in line with reduced administration time. One of the biggest advantages of Version One is that not only do the individual modules provide functionality and save resources, they work together to provide greater savings. We will be using DbMail with DbFax for even faster ordering of supplies and delivery of remittance advice notes." Graham Medwell stated, "We chose Version One as the best overall product by far for our Oracle Financials software."

Version One - The Choice For The Future

In the future, more than £65 million will be invested in reshaping acute services across Leeds and the changes will provide patients and staff with a modern health care environment fit for the 21st century. "Version One is part of the future for us. We already use DbFax with other e-Commerce initiatives and we'll soon be using DbMail as part of the organisation's comprehensive e-Commerce strategy. It's important that we implement solutions that work for us now and in the future, as our requirements and objectives evolve and mature."

Steve Thornton, from the payments department, is currently working with Oracle Payments V10.7. Like many of his colleagues, he can't wait to use DbFax and DbMail. "At the moment we're doing batches of remittance advice notes twice a week. Each run can be anything from 600 to 800. We then have to print the remittances advice notes and put them into envelopes. All the remittances advice notes are then posted first class. That's wasting hours each week."

When asked why Version One would be the best solution he replied, "It's very widely used within the healthcare sector and the majority of NHS Trusts use it. It's also tried, tested and proven to work with Oracle Financials. It's worked fantastically within our purchasing department for the past 3 years. We know it will benefit us too. We know that, with Version One software, it's easy to estimate that in the next year alone "The majority of NHS Trusts use it..... in the next year alone we'll save over £75,000" Steven Thornton, Assistant Payments Manager we’ll save over £75,000."