By Derrick Measham, Research and Development Director, X-on Health
Despite advancements as part of the wider digital front door, across the 6,000+ GP surgeries in England, over two thirds (68 per cent) of patients continue to contact their GP practice via telephone as the first port of call.
The transformation of telephony as a key element of the digital front door is a cornerstone for improving patient outcomes, streamlining operations to increase efficiencies, and reducing costs.
Ensuring patients can access practices and services most aligned to their needs in this way is clearly a fundamental element of improving access.
More than just a standard phone line
Nowadays, GP telephony is not simply a phone line that allows the patient to call and make an appointment, with digital advancements it is far more than that.
Systems can be automated with the use of chatbots and they can provide callbacks to reduce levels of incoming demand.
Set up correctly, digital telephony systems can swiftly direct patients to appropriate online forms and the NHS App, signposting to relevant neighbourhood services and ultimately ensuring those who need an appointment are able to get one.
In addition to benefits for the general public, digital phone systems also work in the favour of the practice and their dedicated teams.
Used correctly, digital telephony not only provides a better experience for patients, it can also allow the practice to analyse and optimise their call flow data and metrics, allowing them to staff the lines accordingly at times when they know demand is highest and put tools in place to efficiently direct patients to the service that best suits their needs.
This not only results in improved patient satisfaction, but also lowers demand on staff and GPs.
In one example, Tudor Lodge Medical Centre, optimisation of the telephone systems resulted in the total number of inbound calls decreasing by 21% and the number of online prescriptions being placed increasing by 66 per cent.
The importance of data
Ensuring that patient data is accurate, reliable, and consistent across all digital platforms is essential for the successful implementation and operation of digital healthcare solutions.
Largely speaking, the telephony data metrics collected by NHS England focus on the following areas:
- Call volumes and total answered calls
- Calls abandoned and missed call volumes
- Call times to answer and time period abandoned
- Call backs required and call backs made
- Average queue length times
From my point of view, as a supplier with a large telephony footprint across primary care and millions of patients accessing NHS services through us, we feel quite a sense of responsibility to do the right thing.
Why data clarity is essential
With approval from GP practices as part of their GP Contract Direction with NHS England, practice data is supplied by each telephony supplier to NHS England.
That’s all well and good, but one of the key elements for me relates to the consistency of that data.
From the list above, let’s look at one example: how does an abandoned call vary from a missed call, and how is each reported?
Working for the largest GP telephony supplier in England, it is evident that every supplier needs to be on the same page.
All digital telephony suppliers must be crystal clear of what each data metric means and how it should be reported.
This is not only for the benefit of NHS England in their wider reporting analysis, but it is equally important to the practices themselves, and not only for their own analysis or system improvements.
If a practice wants to change telephone supplier for any reason they should be able to do so without fear of losing historical data, or having data provided in a way that perhaps doesn’t correlate to what they have recorded previously.
Take advantage of the golden opportunity
The introduction of digital telephony as part of the wider digital front door is a golden opportunity for GP practices, particularly as the timing aligns so closely with Labour’s commitment to support primary care and deliver a modern appointment booking system to end the 8am scramble.
Approximately 90 per cent of practices already have digital cloud telephony in place.
They should take advantage of the tools available to them to analyse and improve their services for their own patients benefit, whilst also taking on board that data supplied to NHS England will help to describe and evidence the pressure that primary care is under.
On average each surgery receives around 7,000 phone calls per month, 10 times the volume of online consultations.
This will ultimately allow them to lobby on behalf of practices, PCNs and ICBs for improvements and funding.
Digital telephony tools in primary care are there for the benefit of the practice and the patient.
It is an area that is clearly under pressure but through the correct use and optimisation of digital tools it is one where significant improvements can be made.
Analysing the data is the first step on this journey.
