Thousands of GP surgeries across the UK can now improve practice efficiency and gain more time to care for their patients through an agreement that will see the Surgery Connect telephone solution available directly through the EMIS GP clinical system.
Surgery Connect, from X-on, is a cloud-based telephone solution that features – uniquely through one system – services such as telephone triage, appointment reminders, and call recording on a platform that is already helping GP surgeries across the country save time and money. Now the service is available directly through the EMIS Health clinical system that is used in 55% of the UK primary care market.
This means that GP surgeries can have rapid access to services that increase their efficiency and address wider ambitions such as the GP Forward View in England, which has identified several high impact areas where practices can release time to care.
One such area is with new forms of GP appointments, such as telephone triage and consultation. These are believed to help address the access issues that have seen a significant fall in the number of people finding it easy to get through to their surgery, from 79% in 2012 and 68% in 2017, according to the latest GP Patient Survey.
Surgery Connect features Triage Assist, an outbound patient triage system that allows triage calls to be processed methodically and in a structured manner. This helps GPs deliver such a service more quickly and with direct access to patient information. Recording Tracker, another feature of the system, provides secure, permission-controlled access to full call recording logs, linked to individual patient records from within the EMIS system. This means that doctors can have a greater understanding of what the patient has discussed with the surgery previously.
Paul Bensley, managing director of X-on, welcomed the partnership with EMIS Health. “GP surgeries now have, in one place, access to the latest in telephone technology that can help increase practice efficiency and deliver against the vision of the GP Forward View. We have developed this technology in close collaboration with practices across the country, and we know that integration with primary care clinical systems can make all the difference to a busy GP surgery.”
