Patients’ notes typed up in India

7:00pm Wednesday 20th June 2012 in Oxfordshire

Jacquie Pearce-Gervis Jacquie Pearce-Gervis

OXFORDSHIRE patients’ notes are being sent to India to be processed, the Oxford Mail can reveal.

Notes dictated on to audio tapes by clinicians at the Oxford University Hospitals Trust (OUH) are sent to the firm Alden Press to be transcribed. The company then sends them digitally to India.

Paul Brennan, OUH’s director of clinical services said: “The trust produces patient notes following clinics every week.

“Most are dictated on to audio tapes by our doctors.

“They are then anonymised, encrypted and sent by secure server to the company who currently provide this service for us.

“The trust tenders this service out to get the best possible value for money for the trust and the best service for patients.”

Jacquie Pearce-Gervis, of Oxfordshire based watchdog Patient Voice, said she had not heard of any problems locally but it was a shame medical secretaries were no longer used for the work.

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Comments(12)

Dilligaf2010 says...
7:15pm Wed 20 Jun 12

Are they trying to say this is the best option?
I'd love to know what percentage of errors there are, I can't imagine the people typing are sufficiently fluent in English that mistakes aren't made.

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Dr bob is my hero says...
7:22pm Wed 20 Jun 12

Dilligaf2010 wrote:
Are they trying to say this is the best option?
I'd love to know what percentage of errors there are, I can't imagine the people typing are sufficiently fluent in English that mistakes aren't made.
I don't know if irony is the right word. But I used to work for The Alden Press and they lost a lot of journal work when The O.U.P. sent most of their journals over to Hong Kong on tape to be printed and shipped back, the biggest customer B.S.P. soon followed suit and The Alden Press factory closed down with the loss of all our jobs. And now it looks like William Alden has learnt and is playing the game as well. So Dilly yes it is the cheapest option, unfortunately.

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Dilligaf2010 says...
7:38pm Wed 20 Jun 12

Dr bob is my hero wrote:
Dilligaf2010 wrote:
Are they trying to say this is the best option?
I'd love to know what percentage of errors there are, I can't imagine the people typing are sufficiently fluent in English that mistakes aren't made.
I don't know if irony is the right word. But I used to work for The Alden Press and they lost a lot of journal work when The O.U.P. sent most of their journals over to Hong Kong on tape to be printed and shipped back, the biggest customer B.S.P. soon followed suit and The Alden Press factory closed down with the loss of all our jobs. And now it looks like William Alden has learnt and is playing the game as well. So Dilly yes it is the cheapest option, unfortunately.
It may be the cheapest, but is it the best? I know, as do probably many others, from experience with call centres in India, the language barrier is usually huge.

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Feelingsmatter says...
8:27pm Wed 20 Jun 12

Well maybe that explains how my son's latest hospital admission resulted in his notes stating he had just commenced Prozac when in fact he'd just started taking Propanolol. It's such a ridiculous thing to do, especially when we KNOW it's all about money. I remember the number of medical secretaries who were made redundant from the Churchill about 5 years back, my good friend being one of them. Clearly our local health authority cares more about saving money than being accurate. I wonder how long it will be before someone dies as a result of this, or records are hijacked and published.

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Andrew:Oxford says...
9:25pm Wed 20 Jun 12

Maybe the Drs or Consultants should dictate directly into a medic-enhanced version of "Siri" for electronic transcription - with the original voice recording retained "attached" to the record for security.

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LarryG75 says...
10:48pm Wed 20 Jun 12

No doubt its still better than the handwriting and spelling of the doctors!

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snert says...
12:36am Thu 21 Jun 12

Jsut another set of UK based jobs being palmed off to India. Yes we appear to save money that way but with the number of people out of work and on benefits because of the lack of jobs because they've gone to India and other such places, are we really saving money? Save with one hand pay with the other.

Off-shoring is a false economy and the quicker these idiots at the top see this the better. I've had direct experience of off-shoring with my work and the work that was done by them was substandard and required reworking in about 80% of things. The time difference in business hours is a nightmare as is the language barrier. The constant need for micromanaging these companies all ends up to costing more money than they save.

Wake up!

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snert says...
12:37am Thu 21 Jun 12

And we won't go into the problems regarding legalities when these companies don't perform. If they screw up, there is no comeback from the UK for them as they're in India (or wherever) and they're simply not subject to UK law.

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Mark L. says...
8:20am Thu 21 Jun 12

This is not new, my wife who is a senior nurse told me this earlier this year. As feelingsmatter said- how long before someone dies due to errors in their notes due to mis-spelling or other errors.

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simplicissimus says...
9:13am Thu 21 Jun 12

NQO needs abler, better journos. This has been hospital practice in Oxon for many months, if not years.

It's a false economy, and should be dropped.

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King Joke says...
12:48pm Fri 22 Jun 12

Dilligaf2010 wrote:
Are they trying to say this is the best option? I'd love to know what percentage of errors there are, I can't imagine the people typing are sufficiently fluent in English that mistakes aren't made.
Have you read the OM comments pages recently Diligaf? The standards of spelling, punctuation and grammar amongst English people isn't up to much these days either.

This doesn't mean outsourcing is a good thing, but given the dreadful standards of written English demonstrated by native speakers, it won't be much of a step down to use workers in India, in terms of quality.

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Dilligaf2010 says...
1:23pm Fri 22 Jun 12

King Joke wrote:
Dilligaf2010 wrote:
Are they trying to say this is the best option? I'd love to know what percentage of errors there are, I can't imagine the people typing are sufficiently fluent in English that mistakes aren't made.
Have you read the OM comments pages recently Diligaf? The standards of spelling, punctuation and grammar amongst English people isn't up to much these days either.

This doesn't mean outsourcing is a good thing, but given the dreadful standards of written English demonstrated by native speakers, it won't be much of a step down to use workers in India, in terms of quality.
I understand what you're getting at, but I was more concerned about the people understanding what's being said on the recording sufficiently to know what to type.
Hopefully if the Government plans to reintroduce GCEs, instead of GCSEs, go ahead, things might change, I'm all for more Grammar schools too.

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