NWSSP Mobile Elevating Work Platforms

NHS Wales Shared Services Partnership, Primary Care Services Business Support Team, recently based in Dupont, Mamhilad Estate, Pontypool, houses several different sub-teams of the Business Support Department. These teams provide critical services to NHS Wales Shared Services Partnerships, Primary Care Services (PCS) stakeholders and customers, both internal and external.

This includes the following services: Live Patient Medical Records The Provision of the Patient Medical Records (PMR) service and the associated medical records movement. PCS currently provide this service to 129 GP Practices across Wales, consisting of over 1,200,000 patient records.

The service relates to the storage of live patient medical records in our Central archive as opposed to on-site in GP Practices. The service has expanded since being established in 2015, providing opportunity within Primary Care to expand and offer additional services to optimise the use of space in General Practice.

PCS staff require constant access to these medical records as they are picked and returned daily. Deceased & Suspense Medical Records The Management of an All-Wales archive service for Primary Care Contractors and PCS Staff.

All Welsh Deceased & Suspense records are stored in line with legal requirements set by Welsh Government: These records also require regular retrieval as part of the Health Record Request service provided by PCS. As a result of the recent relocation of our entire archive including live PMR, suspense and recently deceased patients’ medical records, the decision was made to maximise the space in the new building and therefore increase the height of the racking to 4 tier (rather than the 3 tier in the previous building).

In order to allow safe access to the records on the higher tiers, the NWSSP Health and Safety department advised the introduction of Mobile Elevated Working Platforms (MEWPs) to retrieve or replace medical records. It was agreed that the procurement of a push able MEWP rather than drivable would ensure that the machine can easily be manoeuvred in and out the narrow isles (100cm) between the racking and this would cause less damage to the racking infrastructure. NWSSP are looking to lease 9 Mobile Elevated Work Platforms (MEWP) for an initial period of 3 years, with the possibility of two subsequent extensions of 2 years.