In March 2024, the UK government announced its Spring Budget. While most eyes and headlines were focused on National Insurance cuts and the potential abolition of non-dom status, ours were pleased to see the inclusion of £3.4 billion extra investment for NHS digitisation.
The world has - much like Bob Dylan in 1965 - gone electric, so it can be startling to realise that our beloved National Health Service remains reliant on physical documents such as patient records stored within Lloyd George boxes. Handling and managing these tangible pieces of paper data every day can be frustrating at best, but deeply inefficient and even non-compliant with GDPR legislation at worst.
The funding will, we hope, pave the way towards a modern approach to medical record management, but we also know that that changing processes within the healthcare sector is not something that can be taken lightly. Your patients’ lives and well-being are, after all, at stake, placing an additional responsibility on your shoulders that simply doesn’t exist in other industries that might have digitised a long time ago. Any hesitancy is understandable, but in the case of converting Lloyd Goerge physical files to digital ones, the benefits can be numerous and significant when the transformation is carried out by dedicated specialists.
To better understand the future of Lloyd George digitisation, it is first important to take a brief look at the past - specifically the history of these storage solutions that have been a feature in most GP practices for over a hundred years.
A very brief history of Lloyd George Boxes
The origins of these narrow, rectangular document storage boxes can be traced back to 1911, the year in which Prime Minister Lloyd George introduced the National Insurance Act. By doing so, he revolutionised social welfare in the United Kingdom, giving millions of people access to subsidised healthcare which they would not have had otherwise.
Each card contained within the box represents a patient in the system and would follow them from one practice to another if they moved location. Even before digitisation of these files was an option, the single card per patient system grew into a collection of differently-sized documents held together by elastic bands to reflect complex and evolving medical history, making the process of sorting through them quite a challenge - something exacerbated by the unavoidable fraying, creasing and bending damage inflicted by the person entrusted with the task.
While the introduction of the Lloyd George storage box marked a new, more accessible age for healthcare in the UK, most healthcare practitioners and administrative teams think it is now time to find an alternative solution that ensures both document integrity and strict confidentiality.
What are the five benefits of Lloyd George digitisation?
A digital transformation of patient records, as stored in Lloyd George boxes, can deliver a myriad of benefits. Some save time, others save space and money; all of them improve the service that the NHS delivers by making data management, storage and disposal a far easier challenge.
1. Enhanced efficiency
Enhanced efficiency is perhaps one of the biggest benefits of Lloyd George digitisation. When your administrative team members need to retrieve a physical file relating to a patient within a Lloyd George box, the process may look something like this: they will go to a locked cupboard, drawer or another secure safe place, they will take out the storage box, place it on their desk and begin to run their eyes and fingers across the tops of the cards within. If the patient card they are looking for isn’t in the box, they may need to look in another box, perhaps stored somewhere else in the building. In short, it is not an efficient way of managing data.
If, however, you have undertaken a Lloyd George digitisation exercise whereby the files are stored on our CAS Cloud system, your administrative employee can simply type the patient’s identifiable information into the search box and bring up the required records. They can then take the required action, log any notes on the system and instantly return the record to the digital library with a few clicks of their mouse and keyboard.
In the healthcare sector where not only is time money but it also has a bearing on a patient’s vitality, the difference between a laborious physical retrieval and a quick, simple and easy digital one can be significant, potentially reducing wait times and improving the overall efficiency of the Trust.
2. Improved security
Physical records are always at risk of theft, leaving sensitive patient information vulnerable to the nefarious intentions of other. By digitising your Lloyd George files, you are introducing several important layers of security to protect your patients and their sensitive information.
Firstly, digital records can be encrypted, ensuring that patient data remains confidential and secure at all times. You may also choose to introduce access controls which ensure that only authorised personnel - such as the patient’s doctor - can view the data and update the records. If, for whatever reason, you would like to know who has accessed a particular record and when, an automatic log is kept, visible only to whoever you give permission to. Finally, you can set up access alerts to notify you if a particular member of staff attempts to access a file that they don’t have permission to. All of these things improves accountability, transparency and, ultimately, security.
3. Reduced costs
The NHS is under considerable amounts of pressure to reduce and streamline its spending whilst also improving the service that it provides. That is an almost impossible task, but by eliminating the need for physical storage space and reducing the administrative overheads associated with managing paper records, digitisation can lead to significant long-term savings which can be reinvested in other areas of your organisation such as research, equipment or personnel.
To illustrate the cost-saving benefit of a Lloyd George digitisation project, a similar initiative to create an online booking system at hospitals and GPs is expected to produce savings of approximately £50 million per year for the NHS Trust and reduce booking wait times considerably.
4. Improved compliance
All healthcare providers and any associated organisations are subject to the strict GDPR legislation that was introduced by the European Union in 2018 and adopted by the UK after its departure from the bloc. As outlined in the regulation, not only do you need a valid reason for collecting a patient’s data (which should be explicitly communicated to them), you must also ensure that appropriate steps have been taken to safeguard that data from unauthorised access, loss, damage and theft.
All of those responsibilities beneath the GDPR umbrella are far more difficult to fulfil if the data is in the form of physical documents and requires regular, manual intervention. Having digitised your patient records, these can be securely stored on a dedicated cloud platform and protected using the measures we have outlined previously - all of which is done automatically. Digitisation also comes with the additional benefit of scheduling secure, confidential disposal once data’s retention period comes to an end and the information is considered to be obsolete.
5. Saved space
In NHS facilities everywhere, space is at a premium, requiring you to make the best use of every inch that you possibly can without compromising quality of care or cleanliness. Physical documents take up space - significant amounts of space if you are managing data for a high number of patients - but by converting them into digital format and storing them on CAS Cloud - for example - healthcare facilities can free up valuable space previously dedicated to paper storage. The transition to digital records eliminates the need for bulky filing cabinets, shelving units, and storage rooms, creating a more streamlined and organised healthcare environment.
Conclusion
A Lloyd George digitisation project whereby you convert your physical files into digital ones that are stored on a dedicated, secure server can benefit your efficiency, the trust of your patients, and the budgets that you are expected to meet. We understand the importance of effective data management in the healthcare sector and are committed to supporting organisations on their digitisation journey. Our solutions can provide peace of mind, whilst also delivering significant efficiency and compliance benefits, allowing you to focus on delivering expert care, while we take care of your data management obligations.