Go through the case study and answer the questions that follow. The Lewisham Hospital NHS Trust comprises University Hospital Lewisham, The Childrens Hospital Lewisham and Dunoran Home (a residential nursing home in Bromley). The Trust manages approximately 650 beds and currently employs around 2,500 staff. The Data Quality Challenge The south-east London hospitals were seen as having problems with fragmented patient records, particularly the difficulty of identifying whether a record existed for a newly-admitted patient. When patients were admitted to hospital, they were not always correctly identified as having an existing medical record, often due to a change of name or address; sometimes the patients state of health made it difficult to get accurate details and sometimes it is simply a case of a clerical error in not finding the patient on the system. New records were then opened for them and their previous history lost to their clinical team. With approximately 150 new patient registrations each day to be compared against the 930,000 existing records in the Lewisham Hospital NHS Trust database, the search for duplicate records was a time-consuming manual task, taking more than half a day. At one stage there was a six month backlog. As Terry Walton, IT Manager at Lewisham Hospital, points out, This is not just about meeting government targets and overcoming fragmented patient records. There is a clinical risk if a newly-admitted patient is not identified as having an existing record with us. Having clean, high integrity patient data is also an essential requirement for connecting to the Connecting for Health Local Service provider. In his quest to achieve a single patient view, Terry applied for funding from Connecting for Health. He organised a joint procurement for Al Tareeqah Management Studies - 2020 5 the Lewisham Hospital NHS Trust, Kings College Hospital NHS Trust and the South London and Maudesley NHS Trust. Questions: 1. What in your understanding are the issues that Lewisham Hospital faces ? 2. What are the dangers to fragmented patient records for Hospitals providing healthcare? 3. What would be your suggestions to Lewisham hospitals as a HCIS consultant to maintain their patient records safe?