Greystone House Surgery

Advanced Telephony

Introduction

Difficulties in getting through to primary care services via telephone are a widely reported problem across the country. The NHS England South East Region Primary Care Transformation Team commissioned Redmoor Health to support Primary Care Networks (PCNs) and GP practices in their region to optimise the use of their chosen telephony systems, for the benefit of the regional patient population. The PCNs and GP practices were all at different stages in their journey, with some having had products in place for a long time, compared to others who were only just getting set up.

Greystone House Surgery is a single site practice in Redhill, Surrey that was a part of this work.

Inputs

Redmoor Health was asked to help the GP practice understand how they can use their data to make relevant changes and improve their processes such as call flows, call queuing and callbacks to support access and demand. This was done in a way that allowed practices within a PCN to align their processes so that all patients have the same experience when accessing primary care.

Redmoor Health’s programme management and coordination included:

– Development and delivery of webinars
– 1:1 sessions with the PCNs and GP practices
– Training sessions on understanding data, and process mapping
– ‘Cheat sheets’ for staff to assist with best use of telephone systems
– Reviewed telephone data and call flows

Outcomes

As a result of this work, Greystone House Surgery was able to start looking at their systems and processes for minimising missed calls, call options, call queueing, reducing calls through the promotion of other options such as online booking and the NHS App, and more.

By reviewing inbound call patterns, call length and services required, they have been able to create relevant solutions, such as decreasing call queue length over lunchbreaks when there are less people available to answer the phones, amending call options so there are more messages letting people know of other ways they can get in touch and those that need to talk to some one go in the same queue so the call back facility is triggered, processing calls more quickly and having ways the system can let them know when more manpower is required.

Impact

So far, the impact of this work has been considerable. Using a random sample surgery in the area and comparing year-on-year data, the percentage of calls missed has almost halved, from 20.4% to 11.7%. The length of time patients were held in the call queue also reduced dramatically – from an average of 4 minutes and 15 seconds per call to just 2 minutes 30 seconds. And overall, the number of inbound calls has reduced thanks to patients being given other means of accessing primary care.

Where training opportunities for the call handling team would be beneficial, they have been able to identify this and offer training; systems are now in place to let admin staff know when they are needed to help out the call handling team, and days when extra staff are regularly need have been identified.

There are now plans to add more triage appointments to the online booking system the night before to reduce the number of calls made for this reason, and staff are regularly promoting the use of the NHS App and online services to patients as an alternative. They will soon be looking into how long an average patient might wait in a call queue before abandoning the call, as well as the reasons why some calls are abandoned altogether so that they can ensure those groups of patients are provided for.

Whether it is by training and helping you use and embed technology, showcasing the great work you are doing, or helping you learn from experiences we have been part of elsewhere. Contact us to see how we can transform your digital practice.