Netcall | Customer Story

Outpatients Transformation

The Royal Cornwall Hospital NHS and Isles of Scilly transformed patient experience with our patient engagement portal, Patient Hub.

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Challenge

The Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust (RCHT) is the main provider of acute and specialist care services in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. It serves a population of around 470,000 people, a figure that increases significantly with visitors during the busiest times of the year.

RCHT embarked on an outpatient transformation programme to optimise their referrals and give patients greater control and convenience with their appointments – meaning less time travelling to hospital appointments and in waiting rooms — and better access to follow-up hospital care when needed.

Working with Netcall has been great. They’ve listened to our ideas, they’ve understood and got the vision of what we were trying to achieve in terms of an end goal.

— Claire Florey, SRO – Outpatient Transformation, Royal Cornwall Hospital NHS Trust

Solution

  • A single point of referral entry to streamline the patient journey and give the most appropriate treatment
  • Improved patient experience, 70% now access appointments through the patient portal
  • 56% reduction in DNAs as patients manage their own healthcare
  • Saving 1,677 p/m otherwise wasted appointments, supporting elective recovery
  • No patient left behind, an integrated journey through telephony and legacy systems
 

When RCHT, as part of outpatients transformation, originally mapped out all the referrals, there were lots of different ways into their organisation. Now they have a single point of entry. They signpost each referral into different services for face-to-face, remote consultations including telephone and video and management through advice and guidance. Each referral is vetted and triaged to the most appropriate service or provider.

This was a step change for RCHT. In the past, they would have set up a different web portal per service. Now they communicate through one portal for all outpatient work, transforming outpatient services for patients.

Before the implementation of Patient Hub, my day was a lot more paper based so the only way that we could tell patients about their appointments is by sending letters in the post. It’s amazing to have something that is automatically sending text messages and emails.

— Charles Webb, Outpatient Booking Coordinator, Royal Cornwall Hospital NHS Trust

A great outcome
RCHT operational model is now included as an example in planning guidance to support other trusts looking for case studies to implement their own personalised outpatients transformation programme. This is a key component of elective recovery across the NHS this year.

 
Now with Patient Hub our patients have all the relevant information online, whenever they need to check it. It means that we are not going to have so many missed appointments…a big part of my job is making sure clinic spaces aren’t empty and that people get seen as quickly as possible.

— Charles Webb, Outpatient Booking Coordinator, Royal Cornwall Hospital NHS Trust

Building on the benefits that patients are able to engage with their appointment slot, patients are now able to adjust and confirm an appointment through the app. The DNA rate for those patients is half the trust’s average. It’s a real significant gain for RCHT. The more we engage with our patients through this technology, the less we are seeing appointment slots wasted.

— Robin Jones, Interim Chief Operating Officer, Royal Cornwall Hospital NHS Trust

56% reduction in DNAs

 
I think the data is indicating to us that we are putting the patient at the centre of what we are doing, enabling new ways of controlling how they access our healthcare and the fact that doing that is seeing the DNAs reduce – a real testament to me that the more we use technology to reach our patients the more they can access our healthcare.

— Robin Jones, Interim Chief Operating Officer, Royal Cornwall Hospital NHS Trust

One platform, limitless possibilities for Cornwall and Isles of Scilly ICS.
If you would like to learn more about how the Liberty Platform and Patient Hub can transform your Trust, talk to us.
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