Case Study...

Prison Health - cutting the need for escorted hospital visits

Prison Health now falls under the management of PCT’s and NHS budgets. When prisoners require medical attention and suspected injuries involve radiology imaging, significant sums are spent annually providing “escorted prisoner” services to and from hospitals. If virtual diagnosis were possible, many could be proven as unnecessary journeys. Escorted prisoner transfers are an expensive exercise and any innovation that contributes to reducing or eliminating unnecessary journeys saves cost, time and carbon impact. Oxfordshire PCT has implemented Cimar at its two offender institutions for which it manages healthcare services – HMP Bullingdon and HMP Huntercombe. Each site is equipped with digital plain film scanning modalities. Patient images taken in the Prisons’ medical centre, are immediately transmitted out to external radiologists for remote access, diagnosis and rapid reporting.

• Eliminating unnecessary "escorted prisoner" journeys
  
  
• Faster delivery of the right clinical care
  
  
• Reduced prisoner security risk and cost of care

Every episode that can be externally qualified as not needing secure escort to hospital, provides immediate and considerable savings to the PCT. Currently every radiology image generated at each HMP site is securely transmitted, diagnosed and reported via remote radiologists, and complete reports can be imported into patient records on the Prisons patient record systems.