[Report 1965] / Medical Officer of Health, West Sussex County Council.

  • West Sussex (England). County Council.
Date:
1965
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1965] / Medical Officer of Health, West Sussex County Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ment system. What is important is that the clerical staff concerned should have the experience to decide instantly on the telephone the nature of any problem and be able to deal with it efficiently. In order to promote the smooth transition to the new system and to ensure that bottlenecks did not occur, a progress statement was com¬ pleted each week. The table shows an extract of the statement for five different weeks at quarterly intervals. 1.1.65 1.4.65 1.7.65 1.10.65 31.12.65 County Clinics: Number on computer . 11 13 23 29 32 Family Doctors: Number on computer . 125 139 170 187 190 Number to be offered computer system ... 48 24 1 1 1 Number requiring clerical assist¬ ance 11 8 8 Number of practice records being prepared . 5 18 10 3 — Totals 189 189 189 191 191 The chief characteristic of the computer is its efficiency. One of the primary source documents for entry into the system is the birth notification card. This is received for all births and, since only 0.6 per cent of parents have declined to give consent for their children to be immunised in the last two years, the computer makes appointments for virtually every child. This fact is of the utmost importance during the period when records are being taken on because of the limited availability of clinical facilities. Whilst the time of general practitioners is usually sufficient for current work, it does not often permit a backlog (which may sometimes be considerable) to be dealt with quickly. During the take-on period it is consequently essential to ensure that the flow of work is sensibly regulated and that proper regard is paid to such matters as the availability of professional time and the size of doctors’ surgeries and waiting rooms. This requires the exercise of intelligence and sound judgement on the part of the staff in arranging for the com¬ puter (which always complies precisely with its instructions) to make such appointments as will match the doctors’ available resources. Because of the arrears of immunisations not done by the clinics and family doctors, about 34 appointments were made by the computer during the take-on period for every 100 records processed. This is illustrated in the following table which also shows that, in time, the number of appointments made falls appreciably despite a continuing increase in the number of records held in computer storage.