Admin matters – Celebrating our Patient Administration Services Team
Our Patient Administration Services are one of our biggest admins teams amongst many at our Trust. The fantastic team ensure they deliver high quality administration processes to support the delivery of safe patient care.
Sue Hobday, our Head of Patient Administration services said; “Our teams are often the unsung heroes, behind the scenes who are vital in making sure the patients and information are all in the right place at the right time.”
Supporting many of our management and clinical services by ensuring day to day operations are run smoothly and are continuously improving also falls within the teams list of duties.
With the team spanning across several departments across our hospitals and providing support around the clock 24/7 they are often one of the first faces or voices you see/hear in your journey through our hospital, they are vital in forming those important relationships with our patients and families.
We’d like to take a moment to show our appreciation for our ambitious administrative teams, that hold our hospital in good stead. If you would like to know more about our administrative teams then you can find more information on them below:
Access to Health Records
The team manage the subject access requests for both Birmingham Children’s Hospital, Birmingham Women’s and Forward thinking Birmingham.
Appointments Booking Centre
The Booking Centre teams are responsible for processing all new out-patient referrals receive into the Trust and supporting patients and families with queries relating to these. The team manage the booking of new and follow-up out-patient appointments for various departments as well as actioning clinic outcomes.
Casenote Summary Team
Across our Children’s Hospital, patients who have multiple volumes of notes from different specialties have them summarised and stored by our administrative teams. The notes are kept updated with any historic filing being removed.
Clinic Changes
All requests for clinics changes including setting up new clinics, cancelling clinics, changing slot times go to the clinic changes team.
Clinical Coding
The Clinical Coding teams are responsible for translating medical information from PEPR, BadgerNet and Lorenzo regional care into alphanumeric codes.
Clinical Decision Unit
Patients can come to the Emergency Department with a referral letter from their GP. The patient will be booked into the Emergency Department by the receptionist
Clinic Preparation
The Clinic Preparation team are required to prepare notes for out-patient clinics. This includes ensuring the notes are available in time for the appointments and hold relevant information.
Data Quality
The team make sure that all information collated for patient records is accurate and up-to-date across our various sites.
With the increasing use of electronic records, it is more important than ever that all data entered is accurately.
Delivery Suite
The Delivery Suite Wards clerk are responsible for welcoming Women from all over the country to our specialised suite ensuring that all of our women’s visits runs as smoothly as possible.
Emergency Department Reception:
The team are responsible for booking in all patients attending the Emergency Department, working with various systems and ensuring we have up-to-date contact information.
Health Records Library
The Health Records Libraries store medical records for our patients.
Lorenzo Training Team
The patient administration systems hold confidential information on all patients who attend the Birmingham Women’s and Children’s Hospital. There are various modules on the system and staff are provided with training relevant to their role. The team also provides training on multiple other systems used by Trust
Management Team
We as a management team support across our service as well as the wider departments across the Children’s and Women’s sites. This includes a variety of projects, new developments and systems as well as new ways of working to improve the patient journey.
Medical Secretaries
Medical secretaries are an integral part of the medical and administrative team, supported by support secretaries and admin assistants as well as business & admin apprentices. Medical secretaries are not merely typists. They are a very important point of contact and communication for general practitioners, consultants, colleagues, nursing staff and other hospital staff, patients and their families. They manage and coordinate clinics, inpatient and outpatient waiting lists and enable the medical staff to make the best use of their time by anticipating and circumventing problems.
They are often the first point of contact with our families and form relationships with our children, young people and their families during their journey through our hospital.
Outpatients Receptionists
The out-patient reception team cover reception areas across both sites, supporting patients as they arrive for their appointments. The Receptionists will check all patient details on the patient administration system and update where required.
Scanning
Scanning ensures that electronic patient records are available for clinicians to review within the patient portal for seamless care.
The Observation Unit
This is an inpatient area attached to the Emergency Department. If a child in the Emergency Department needs closer monitoring they will be admitted to the Observation Ward. The administrative staff will log the activity on the Patient Administration System.
Tracking Office
We are responsible for ensuring patient’s case notes are available for outpatient appointments and in-patient activity.
Ward Clerks
Ward clerks are responsible for ensuring that the patient information is accurate and up to date on their ward. This includes updating the patient administration system to reflect any changes on the ward (admissions, discharges and transfers), filing patient documentation and preparing notes for the clinical coders and tracking case notes.
Please note, some of our photos were taken prior to the pandemic.