In our latest interview in our series, we spoke with Kenny Bloxham the Managing Director of Healthcare Communications. We talk about some of the organisation’s recent projects, the challenges trusts face, the importance of digital inclusion, what to consider when digitising appointment letters and what’s next for the company.
Could you tell me a bit about Healthcare Communications?
Healthcare Communications has been working in secondary care for 19 years and we’re really pleased to say we partner with 120 trusts across England, Wales and Northern Ireland. We support trusts to transform patient communications at scale and across the entire pathway, end to end, from referral to discharge.
We are considering moving into primary care too – there’s a fantastic opportunity to digitise communications between GP’s, patients and hospitals, creating a smoother, quicker experience for all stakeholders from the onset.
We take a digital first approach, but not at the sake of social exclusion. We ensure every patient can receive hospital communications and if they are not digitally enabled or prefer another communication channel, we provide several options including SMS, voice, agent, online portal and paper. Patients choose how they engage – basically our approach is ‘patient first’.
It means when we can fulfil all Trust requirements from a communication perspective. The platform is intelligent, so it attempts the lowest cost channel first and automatically switches to another mode until connection is made.
We are also the number one supplier for the Friends and Family Test, and that’s all digital first.
What are the challenges with transforming patient communications?
From a trust perspective, verify that the innovation has been delivered at scale – it’s one of the biggest reasons digital transformation projects fail globally, they can’t get beyond pilot stage. My advice is to speak to peers using the solution, go for a site visit and check results yourself. If DNA’s have increased since it’s been introduced or it’s stuck in pilot stage, there’s a risk it won’t deliver at your trust either.
Typically trusts take a ‘postal first’ approach to patient appointment communication, involving packing, posting, moving paper – a resource heavy and costly process.
One of the biggest challenges is when appointments are booked 6 months in advance. Circumstances often change due to clinician holidays, staff shortages, patient’s availability etc. There could be 5 or 6 letters around just one appointment to communicate this, at best costing just over £3!
About two years ago we spoke with our client to ask how we could help. We had some independent research completed and asked 2,000 patients why they did not attend (DNA) and how we could improve this. 48% put their DNA to letter related issues, such as arriving late or not at all.
So, we built a digital appointment portal enabling patients to instantly receive letters straight to their smartphone. It is truly digital, not a PDF, so it’s interactive, enabling letter content to convert to 99 languages and patients can increase font size or have the letter read out loud to them. Appointment specific info is also attached and can be accessed at any time.
Approximately 90% of patients who open the letter, interact with it – which is not possible with a PDF letter. If a patient is rebooking or cancelling, then they tap on the response button and it’s reported back to booking teams instantly.
Patients have sent over 131, 455 notifications that their appointment is either unneeded or inconvenient, quickly freeing up availability and helping to reduce DNA’s. By introducing the patient portal and with no other changes, United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust reduced DNAs from 5.8% to 4.1% in 5 months!
From day one, without any promotion, we get 40-45% digital adoption rate, so it quickly delivers a ROI for trusts and now 59 hospitals are offering patients a digital letter option.
To date 1.7 million patients have chosen digital first letters, saving the NHS over £2 million in postal costs!
Could you tell me about your project with Barnsley hospital?
About 2 years ago we won a contract to deliver patient appointment management at the Trust. At the time we were developing our digital letters solution and started the journey with Barnsley in one specialty. Proof of concept was quickly realised, and it soon rolled out trust wide including inpatients.
A key project objective was assurance that patients were receiving important hospital messages and the trust now receives a read receipt when the patient opens the letter.
Results included:
- 48% reduction in postal costs
- DNA’s were between 12-14% a week. Now the figure is between 8 – 9%.
- 65% of patients are opting to go digital over post
What would you say is your biggest achievement in the past 12 months?
We’ve saved NHS trusts over £2 million in postage costs and that’s cash back into the system that can be reused. We’re also very proud to win 4 awards with our partner trusts this year – the submissions are evidence based, so it shows that we’re really making a difference within the NHS.
What is coming in the next 12 months?
Non-appointment letters including outcome letters, discharge letters etc. Essentially it means patients can receive appointment and outcomes letters in one area, fully digitised.
We’re also aligning ourselves even closer with the NHS Long Term Plan and helping to reduce face to face appointments. We are well placed to deliver follow up questionnaires, virtual triage and our new eClinic video consultations.
We’re also ready to introduce RCS (Rich Communication Services) messaging to healthcare – a real game changer set to supersede text messaging in the next 5 years!
Could you tell me about eClinic?
We’ve built a web-based video consultation platform that patients and healthcare workers can access on any device – smartphone, tablet or laptop. It has some great features, enabling clinicians to share PDF’s, take permission-based photos and record sessions if required.
What’s key is the automation behind the appointment initiation. We collect the data and the sessions are automatically scheduled, all the clinician or nurse needs to do is click a button to launch the consultation. Appointments can also be done on an ad hoc basis.
On our roadmap is to introduce speech to text translation, which could help reduce a significant amount of costs and support wider consultations – it means we can deliver a truly multi-channel offering and be as inclusive as possible.
