Rotherham, Doncaster and South Humber NHS Foundation Trust (RDaSH) has completed a six-month pilot to digitise processes and patient experiences across its community service teams.
The pilot aimed to improve communication between primary and secondary services, and support community teams such as podiatry, epilepsy and diabetes teams with patient messaging, video consultations and direct messages to a patient’s GP.
Accurx, the health tech supporting the services, is now being used for patient messaging through SMS or email to send documents, letters, links, surveys and receive text/photo responses. The community teams also adopted video consultations for individual and group sessions, as well as a tool to send messages and documents directly to a patient’s GP.
Angie Wheeler, Manager in the RDaSH Telephone Nursing Service, commented on one of the changes by going digital: “Some people we used to ring monthly just to get weight readings. Now we can text them to get these and it saves us so much time and it’s better for the patients because they don’t always want to talk.”
Dr Satya Raghuvanshi, Head of Clinical at Accurx, added: “We believe that giving everyone involved in a patient’s care the ability to communicate with each other and the patient leads to better care, and this pilot with RDaSH so clearly demonstrates that. It’s often perceived that to achieve widespread change across an organisation, complex systems or processes need to be put in place. But actually, we see time and time again that simple tech, like SMS or email messaging, can lead to vast improvements.”
Last year, Accurx joined us for HTN Now to discuss working with digital suppliers. Posing the question ‘How ready is your ICS to work with digital suppliers?’, accuRx shared their thoughts on the questions ICS leaders should look to ask when looking to procure suppliers that truly meet their needs in delivering integrated care across the whole system. You can watch the session back here.
