Massive
Savings
The Trust’s mission statement is
"Meet our patients' needs by providing
excellent acute and relevant services
together with specific community services
planned in partnership with primary care
and supported by leading-edge education
and research." Although there are
regular donations received from organisations
such as McDonalds, the Variety Club of
Great Britain and Kodak, the Trust continues
to evaluate ways of becoming more efficient
and advanced. Last year alone the Trust
needed to reduce costs by some £6m,
a strain on time and resources.
"DbFax will
save us tens of thousands of pounds"
- Nigel Hodd, Financial Accountant, North
West London Hospitals NHS Trust.
North West London Hospitals
NHS Trust is aware that it is publicly
accountable and open to scrutiny; not
only does it perform within its specialist
medical areas but it is also a major business
enterprise. The Trust is one of the larger
NHS Trusts in the U.K. with a turnover
of approximately £150 million a
year, over 1000 beds and a payroll of
around 4,000. It deals with half a million
patients a year and is constantly looking
at ways of maximising efficiency.
Nigel Hodd, Financial Accountant
for North West London Hospitals NHS Trust
has been with the National Health Service
for over 25 years. In a continuing quest
for more effective working methods, Nigel
Hodd set up an internal project to research
the concept of automated faxing and quickly
discovered the savings that can be made.
"We evaluated a number of products;
Version One’s DbFax impressed us
with the high level of functionality and
the seamless integration with our main
accounting software”. Nigel Hodd
adds, “Even though we are changing
our accounting software to Cfacs (from
the Cedar Group), we did not consider
changing our fax software. We are extremely
pleased with the fax software and we know
that many other Trusts with all types
of accounting software are saving time
and money using DbFax.”
Swift Implementation
The whole process takes a matter of weeks
from the initial meeting to the implementation.
Salim Sabri, Systems Manager responsible
for day-to-day management of the department's
computerised systems worked closely with
Version One, and comments, “I was
impressed with the ease with which the
software was installed and delighted to
see faxes being generated by our system
within a couple of hours of technicians
arriving on site. In two years continual
use, it has never let us down and we find
Version One’s support superb.”
North West London Hospitals
NHS Trust will continue to save over £14,000
a year as well as dramatically increasing
efficiency. As the system is extended
overall savings will be increased and
channeled back into hospital funds. Typically
auto faxing costs just a few pence per
document as opposed to over £1 per
document by more traditional methods.
Electronic proof of delivery assures the
document has been received successfully
by the target recipient.
The accounts department
automatically faxes year-end reconciliation
statements, remittance advices and statements,
saving weeks of work in collating paper
documents and sending them by post. Automation
of the year-end reconciliation alone repays
the investment in DbFax over and over
again.
As the software is introduced
into other NHS and private wings, it will
continue to streamline operations, cut
costs and improve services to clients,
patients and suppliers. Some of the uses
will include confirmation of patient details
to general practitioners and sending copy
invoices to medical insurance companies.
"DbFax should
be more widely used within the NHS. It
is easy to use and the cost benefits support
the strategic aims of making the most
effective use of resources..."
- Nigel Hodd, Financial Accountant, North
West London Hospitals NHS Trust.
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Boosted
Productivity
Nigel Hodd concludes: "Our DbFax
system has improved morale, removing
the drudgery from printing and mailing
tasks, and freed staff to be more
effective in their role. For example
sales ledger staff can concentrate
on processing invoices and dealing
with queries. We are under continual
pressure to make the most effective
use of resources and welcome all the
help we can get. DbFax is well received
internally and by all the third parties
we fax out to, who feel they are being
dealt with more speedily and efficiently.
The flexibility of the system enables
us to personalise documents to include
a message or even to provide customers
with the format that they want. We
have become a more efficient supplier
and client.” |
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