Detailed job description and main responsibilities

OXFORD RADCLIFFE HOSPITALS NHS TRUST

Job Title:                                             Health Records Officer

Base:                                                   Health Records Department,

Oxford Radcliffe Trust

(JR/WW/NOC)

Grade:                                                 Band 2

Hours of Work:                                  37.5

Managerial Accountability:                Library Supervisor       

Responsible to:                                  Library Service Development Manager

Main Purpose of Post

• Work as part of a team to provide a professional and efficient administrative function that underpins the retrieval of health records and maintains effective working relationships with clinical, nursing and administrative staff.
• Provide assistance to deliver health records across three of the trust sites for outpatient and inpatient attendances.
• To provide administrative support within the Health Records Library and across other sites if required in order to maintain library services.
• Support patient with information for subject access requests

Duties and Responsibilities

Telephone bay

• Prioritise telephone & email requests in order of urgency.
• Locate health records using the electronic patient record (EPR) and old tracking systems (OxPas)
• Request records from other users across the trust or from offsite storage to forward on to wards and departments.
• Ensuring confidentiality by checking requestor’s identification and their rights to access patient information.
• Highlighting to Library Supervisor if there are any concerns relating to the requestor.
• Track health records to user destinations, ensuring number of volumes are recorded. Making up new folders as required.
• Deliver records to wards and departments by hand; ensuring confidentiality of the health record is always maintained.
• Deliver requests to appropriate members of health records staff. Ensuring requests from police, solicitors, insurance companies etc are passed on to Subject Access team.
• Assist staff members throughout the trust on use of the microfiche/cartridge system.
• Arrange for collection of records required for the women’s centre.
• Bag and deliver notes to shuttle and postal services as required
• File requests in date order to be retained for three months.
• Communicate effectively using good verbal skills with other colleagues, health professionals, and the general public.
• Prioritise miscellaneous paperwork received daily from other trust sites for filing into health records.

Reception, track, pull, file, cull

• To assist visitors to the department in retrieving records
• Providing training for research and audit staff looking to retrieve records.
• Track records back to the library daily using culling methods.
• File health records in reverse digit order and maintain filing areas.
• Provide health records pulling for outpatient services. Preparing clinic list as required.
• Cull records from the libraries as required
• Track records sent to offsite storage on EPR. 
• Maintain clear numbering system for boxed filing of records for staff members returning records to offsite Storage Company.

Clinic Preparation

• Print clinic lists and pass in a timely manner to clinic pull team for first pull
• Requesting records from offsite storage as required:
• Ensure new folders or subsequent folders are created and annotated as necessary.
• Request records from other users across the Trust to forward on to clinic destinations.
• Annotate clinic lists at all stages to show a clear audit trail of progress.
• Track all records to correct user destinations.
• Attach copies of clinic lists with records.
• Deliver records to postal room, shuttle or department as required.
• Be first point of contact for clinic enquiries.
• Prioritise late bookings and phone requests.
• Track and forward late requests using the shuttle service for delivery if appropriate.
• Prioritise workload on a daily basis.

Archivist

• Be first point of contact for offsite storage enquiries and giving guidance on how to request records, for all records’ users across the Trust.
• Track in all records returning from the offsite storage company on EPR and contact requester.
• Report any health records not returned from offsite storage to Library Supervisor and help locate health records using tracking codes and audit sheets.
• Complete microfiche requests.
• File and maintain invoices and requesting forms daily
• Maintain audit trail of all requests and returns of health records from offsite storage Company

Scanning

• Support all trust with scanning of patient health records.
• Documents are scanned into the EPR using the OUH ScanIT application.
• Run clinic list for up coming patient appointment for health records to be scanned.
• Receive paperwork from outpatient departments to be scanned into EPR
• Documents for scanning must be clearly identifiable as such, and separated from other documents within the storage area, such as those destined for filing or destruction.
• Documents should be batched by date, and or specialty reference.

• Check that if a document is part of a patient clinical record, all the pages to be scanned refer to the same patient and remove any that don’t.

All duties to include

• Check that all documents are filed within the health record as per health records policy
• Comply with the requirements of The Data Protection Act, Access to Health Records Act and legislation issued in relation to confidential data.
• Take proactive action on health & safety issues and report to Library Supervisor any faulty equipment, such as kick stools/trolleys that need to be fixed or replaced.
• Request records that are stored off-site for filing of miscellaneous paperwork
• Participate in the training of new team members.
• Ability to meet the physical demands that are needed in this very busy department.
• Take part in Bank Holiday cover.
• All staff will be expected to rotate and cover duties as required
• Attend department meetings and training as required to ensure that you maintain an up-to-date working knowledge of the service and trust procedures.

The Oxford Radcliffe NHS Trust operates a no-smoking policy and is an Equal Opportunities employer, currently working towards qualities and diversity of employees.

This job description is not definitive or restrictive in any way and should only be regarded as a guidance of the duties required and may be amended in the light of experience.

Risk Management

The management of risk is the responsibility of everyone and will be achieved within a progressive, honest and open enviroment.

Staff will be provided with the necessary education, training and support to enable them to meet this responsibility.

Staff should be familiar with:

Major Incident Policy

Fire Policy

They should make themselves familiar with the local response plan and their role within that response.

Responsibilities for Health and Safety

The post holder is responsible for ensuring that all duties and responsibilities of this post are carried out in compliance with the Health & Safety 1974 Statutory Regulations and trust Policies and Procedures. This will be supported by the provision of training and specialist advice where required.