Effective recall depends on several things working together. Practices need to prioritise the right patients, pace activity against available appointments, make it easy to book and use different approaches for patients who do not respond first time.
When those elements are not joined up, clinic space goes unused, admin teams spend more time chasing and the same patient groups remain difficult to reach.
Recall therefore needs to be managed as a complete patient journey, from identifying and prioritising patients through to invitation, booking, follow-up and attendance.
Getting the right patients into the right appointments
A clinical search may identify everyone eligible for a review, but that does not mean they should all be contacted in the same way or at the same time.
Practices need to consider clinical need and risk, which groups have historically been harder to engage and where there is the greatest opportunity to identify unmet need. Otherwise, limited appointments can be filled by the patients who are easiest to reach, while higher-priority patients remain outside the pathway.
Activity also needs to reflect the appointments available. Send too many invitations and patients may struggle to book, creating more calls and frustration. Send too few and clinic space goes unused.
Smaller, paced cohorts give practices more control. Invitations can be released against capacity, with later cohorts adjusted according to the response. Clear booking instructions and direct booking links, where appropriate, then make it easier for patients to act without creating more work for reception teams.
Understanding why patients respond differently
Redmoor has built considerable expertise in patient communications through programmes where success depends on people taking action.
Some patients may not understand why an appointment matters. Others may be uncertain about what will happen or unable to find a convenient way to attend. Language, confidence, time, digital access and previous experiences of healthcare can all influence someone’s response.
Patient and persona profiling helps identify these barriers before communications are sent. Messages and follow-up can then be adapted for different groups, rather than relying on one generic invitation.
The wider journey can help too. Practice-branded social content can introduce a campaign, while short explainer or avatar videos can show patients what to expect and reduce uncertainty. Telephone follow-up can then focus on the people who genuinely need a conversation.
The aim is to make each stage more effective, so practices do not have to compensate later with repeated messages and manual chasing.
What we learned in Lancashire
We brought these elements together during an NHS Health Check pilot delivered with Lancashire County Council and four GP practices.
The programme used risk-focused searches and paced invitation cohorts aligned to existing appointment capacity. SMS invitations were redesigned around likely barriers to engagement, supported by reminders, easier booking routes, practice social media and short AI avatar videos.
A live dashboard tracked invitations, bookings and completed Health Checks, allowing activity to be reviewed and adjusted throughout the pilot.
Completed NHS Health Checks increased from 394 at baseline to 1,010 during the pilot, a rise of 156%. The number of patients identified with new or previously unrecognised risk or unmet need increased from 77 to 211, a rise of 174%.
practice manager reported particularly strong uptake among men aged 40 to 50, while another saw a wider spread of patients coming forward after using more targeted messages and avatar content.
These results were achieved within existing appointment capacity. The practices did not add more clinics. They made better use of the capacity already available by improving how patients were prioritised, contacted and supported into appointments.
The Lancashire work reinforced what we have seen elsewhere: better results rarely come from changing one message in isolation. They come from understanding the patient, removing friction and managing the journey more closely.
Launching Redmoor’s Managed Recall Service
For many practices, the difficulty is finding the time and capacity to manage this consistently.
Redmoor is therefore launching a fully managed recall service for practices and PCNs. We will support pathway planning, cohorting, patient invitations, outbound calls, non-responder follow-up, booking and reporting.
Practices retain clinical control, while Redmoor provides the dedicated capacity and patient communications expertise needed to keep recall moving throughout the year. The service can work through existing practice tools or alongside Hippo Recaller where additional workflow, tracking and visibility would be helpful.
Join our webinar
We will explore these approaches during our upcoming webinar:
More Patients Reached, Better QOF, Less Admin: A Smarter Approach to Recall. Wednesday 9 September 2026, 12:00 to 13:00
We will cover the 2026/27 QOF changes, risk-based recall, behavioural science, patient messaging, booking, non-responder follow-up and matching activity to appointment capacity.
Hippo will also demonstrate how digital tools can support more targeted and efficient recall, before we introduce Redmoor’s Managed Recall Service and the practical support available to practices and PCNs.
