I. Introduction

A$.$ Purpose and Background

A$.$ Purpose

Eastern Cape Department of Health is requesting suitable and experienced service providers to submit an expression of interest for the provision of decanting, archiving, digitization $/$ scanning, indexing of patients records in high risks operations $($Maternity and other Medico$-$legal records$)$ and provision of off$-$site records for a period of three years.

B$.$ Objective of the Digitization of ECDoH's Records

The preservation coupled with improving accessibility $($which can only be achieved by digital storage and an efficient management retrieval system$)$ is needed for the ECDoH. In view of the above, the primary objectives of the proposed initiative are:

$1.$ Preservation $-$ Preservation of record is the foremost objective. Once the documents are scanned and digitized, preservation of the original can be ensured for a much longer period as the need to handle the physical documents would be eliminated or minimized to a great extent since digital document would be made available through the DMS $($Document Management System$)$ Software.

$2.$ Accessibility and Availability $-$ The DMS would make the record in the hospitals more accessible to end users, within the ECDoH. Users can search the documents through metadata. This will greatly improve the speed and convenience of accessing the documents and information held by the hospitals.

$3.$ Enhance Searchability $-$ All records would be linked based on a Unique patient identifier making a tremendous amount of data easily available on any subject matter.

$4.$ Digitized records and electronically capturing of data would enable the hospitals to:

$$ Digitizing and indexing of documents through Document Management

$$ System and accessing the same as and when required

$$ Digitization of patient records and its retrieval to provide better services to the patients.

B$.$ Overview and History

$$ History of the organization $(12$ paragraphs$)$

ECDOH is made up of former Transkei, Ciskei and Cape Provincial administration $($CPA$).$ ECDOH still has large piles of records dating back from the time of those $3$ different administrators,

These records, together with those of the current administration are kept and occupy large space which could have been used productively.

This has been largely due to the absence of a systematic recording, management, disposal and archiving programme which forms an integral part of records management.

ECDOH Records Management policy is guided by National and Provincial Archives, Records Services Act and Promotion of Access to Information Act.

Poor management of records continues to expose CDOH to litigations risks.

II$.$ Scope of the Proposal

Scope of the proposal entails decanting, archiving, digitization$/$scanning$,$ indexing of patient$$s records in high risk operations $($Maternity and other Medico$-$legal records$)$ and provision of off$-$site records storage for the Eastern Cape Department of Health for $26$ highly litigated hospital for the period of $3$ years.

$1.$ Format and size of records

l$-0$

All scanned images must be the size of the original document

$2.$ Estimated records

Records for off$-$site storage $780000$ boxes

Lowest estimate $520000$

Highest estimate $780000$ boxes

$3.$ Scope of work $($Decanting and Archiving$)$

a$.$ The service provider must provide off$-$site storage facilities in $4$ regions $($Nelson Mandela Metro, Buffalo City Metro, Chris Hani District and OR Tambo.

b$.$ The commercial storage facility must comply with all archival requirements.

c$.$ The service provider must provide personnel for decanting of records rooms under the supervision and$/$or guidance of the departmental official $($head of patient administration$)$ in each site$/$hospital$.$

d$.$ Records identified to have archival value and earmarked for scanning must be transported to the scanning site by the service provider

e$.$ The service provider must pack the records in boxes

f$.$ Service provider must provide all relevant packaging material for example boxes, labels, barcodes etc

g$.$ The service provider must provide all necessary equipment, hardware, software and personnel required to facilitate the take on

h$.$ Service provider must provide the department with a verified list in hard copy and electronic format of records packed in boxes ready to be transported and transferred to the off$-$site storage facilities

i$.$ Quality assurance must be built on all processes

j$.$ Requested records and$/$or information $($hard copy$)$ from the off$-$site storage must be provided within $48$ hours from the time of request

k$.$ Copy of digitized material must be provided within $24$ hours from the time of request

l$.$ As part of the arrangement and description at the off$-$site storage facility the principle of provenance and original order $($records be stored or kept according to hospitals from which they were taken$)$ must be maintained. Records from one hospital should not be mixed with records of the other hospital.