New system to improve breast screening access
Breast screening services at University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust (Uhsussex) have developed a sustainable electronic system to help increase uptake for breast screening.
The new system, which is now used by more than 150 GP surgeries, is part of a local action plan to get more people to attend their screening and is the first system of its kind in the country. Uhsussex provides two breast services, one for East Sussex, based at the
Park Centre in Brighton, and the other in West Sussex, at Worthing Hospital, as well as seven mobile breast screening units. Steve Dixon, Project Lead for the Integrated Breast Services said: “Screening helps find breast cancers before they present noticeable symptoms. Finding breast cancers early often results in less aggressive treatment and improved quality of life, better overall health and well-being for those diagnosed.”
The IT system used by all breast screening units across the country generates paper results reports. Uhsussex breast services send around 85,000 paper reports a year to GPS – that’s approximately 1,600 a week. Surgeries must review and input the paper results manually which can lead to data entry errors and invitations being sent to unsuitable patients. To address this, colleagues from Integrated Breast Services, alongside IT, and other partner organisations, created an electronic system that sends these result reports to GPS electronically and allows practices to input patient data more effectively. Pilots of the new system received very positive feedback, including how efficient it was – estimating it had halved the time it takes to process paperbased reports.