The PCN applied for winter access funding to support them in the development of a PCN hub to deliver online consultation and non-clinical signposting across their member practices. Redmoor Health’s yourHub programme is a collaborative and scalable delivery programme that brings people together to optimise processes and technology to create better workforce and patient outcomes.

Redmoor Health was approached and funded by the Primary Care Network to support their PCN Hub programme with the following:

• To understand and map out the current operational and technical processes that the practices in the PCN were following for the management of online consultations.
• Using their current workflow as a baseline, we were asked to work with the PCN member practices to design a new standardised online consultation process that would enable the practices to create a full hub model in the future.
• Supporting the alignment of uptake of online consultation across practices due to some variance.
• Implementation of a non-clinical signposting tool, managed at PCN level and used across practice teams in the PCN to create a common approach to triage.
• Testing and evaluation of the current online consultation platforms being used by the practices in the PCN with the aim to harmonise the platform across the PCN.
• To better understand their patient population and how activated they are to access primary care services through a digital platform.
• To ensure that considerations have been made for those who may be digitally excluded.
• Creating a social media campaign to further educate patients on the use of online consultation and how it benefits them and the practice.
• To review and analyse telephony data for each practice within the PCN to gain a better understanding of the demand from patients via this route and how it impacts service delivery.

Different online consultation platforms were being used across the PCN as well as varied usage and advertisement to patients; there was no common approach to non-clinical signposting across practices in the PCN; patients of one practice had also got used to using the practice email to contact them for advice. During the programme there were also some delays with the implementation of a new online consultation platform that the PCN wished to trial as part of their decision to have one online consultation tool across the practices.

The Redmoor Health team overcame the initial challenges the PCN were facing by using the differences between the practices as an opportunity to find something that works both at scale but also allows a practice to keep their individuality.

Representatives were encouraged to offer their opinions on what they thought would work for their practice and the PCN through the facilitation of face-to-face workshops.

Using Redmoor’s previous experience on social media management, we supported the PCN with creating a campaign to support the changes that were being made to the way that patients accessed services through the practices.

• There has been an increase in both the number of patients enabled to book appointments and order medications online.
• At present, online booking of appointments has not been re-introduced, as the practice is running a total triage system. There is an opportunity however for some online booking of appointments to begin to be made available, such as cervical screening or other treatment room procedures.
• The number of patients enabled to order medications online has increased from 26.58% to 29.89% (as of May 2022), however, the practice recognises there is scope for further increase.
• The total number of registrations for the NHS App by Boundary House patients is now 1524 (as of July 2022). The number of new NHS App registrations per month has declined (there were 65 new registrations in July 2022), however, this is a common theme across general practice as new registrations peaked late in 2021 due to the availability of the Covid pass on the NHS App.

We ran face-to-face workshops with the PCN practices focusing on:

• Capturing their current processes in each practice (As-is process mapping) and capturing their baseline data.
• Live build of their future target state for dealing with online consultationrequests across the PCN.
• Implementation planning.
• Social Media campaign, using research from other areas who have done something similar and planning for PCN campaign.
• Weekly project meetings to update on progress.
• Baseline data capture and presentation of findings in a baseline data report.
• Facilitation of new online consultation platform demos and support to one practice in the PCN who agreed to start a trial of the platform as part of the project.
• Creation of clinical and non-clinical satisfaction surveys with current online consultation process with an opportunity to suggest changes for the future.
• Creation of social media video with lead GP focusing on ‘Why online consultation’.
• Facilitation of user testing of each online consultation product to gather some patient perspective feedback on each of the systems being used in the PCN.
• Report on online consultation product evaluation to include a needs analysis for PCN, pros and cons of each system and how each can service a PCN hub model.
• We ran a session with the leads from each practice to give an overview of the findings from the telephony data review, this included looking at what interventions could be put in place to alleviate pressure when demand is high.