Bolton NHS Foundation Trust
Revolutionize patient journeys
Royal Bolton Hospital provides a wide range of health and wellbeing services to the people of Bolton and Greater Manchester. As one of the North West’s busiest acute NHS foundation trusts, they deliver care at their hospital, in community venues, and in patients’ homes.
The trust's future planning and strategies include becoming digital tech pioneers to revolutionize their patient journeys. Main challenge was their Did Not Attend rate (DNA) was at an all-time-high since the pandemic, and they didn't want to continue to rely on postal letter reminders.
£93%
of patients opted for SMS
22%
drop in DNA (Did Not Attend) rate.
3K
booking slots saved
Challenge
DNA was at an all-time-high since the pandemic
Solution
SMS and Voice Appointment Reminders
Results
DNAs reduced by 22% and follow ups by 14% in 3 months.
Background
- Source the most cost-effective provider that also offered the most intuitive and feature-rich technology – “get more bang for our buck”.
- DNA rate at an all-time-high due to the pandemic.
- Previous experience of text reminder service was only across a few specialties rather than inclusive to all Trust patients. Staff were eager to roll out in areas that weren’t previously live.
- Trust goals include reducing their carbon footprint by avoiding postal reminders wherever possible.
How did we help?
Using Webex CPaaS solutions, SMS and voice appointment reminders were rolled out solving a number of use cases:
- Conversational messaging gave patients interactivity options to confirm, cancel or rebook, saving the resource usually spent on inbound calls.
- Inclusive, multi-channel communications ensured patients who are not digitally enabled won’t be left behind.
- Message content is tailored to specific clinics or setup with generic messages for those who don’t require personalization.
- Crucial instant messaging feature for communicating in bulk to patients (e.g., canceled clinics) prevents patient dissatisfaction with advanced warning.
- Covid team are also using the instant messaging tool to invite patients for vaccinations and send out test results at scale.
- Full audit trail within the platform enables staff to see exactly what correspondence has taken place with a patient.
Results
- New DNAs reduced by 22% and follow ups by 14% in 3 months.
- High mobile capture of 93% achieved by meticulous pre-implementation work meant that they were in an excellent position to reach the majority of patients via SMS.
- 3000 slots have been identified and potentially reutilized from cancellations and rebooks, helping to address current capacity issues.
- Feedback from admin staff praising the “user friendly software” that is “much more efficient” than their previous platform, while others mention the usefulness of the live system that allows them to drill down into specifics for clinics and specialties.
Future next steps
Start of a Trust-wide transformation journey to implement a full digital by default strategy
The Trust will implement a Patient Engagement Portal delivering digital letters instantly to patients’ mobile phones. Digital patient assessment and waiting list validation projects using eForms.
Developing a reminder service through patient feedback from questions such as “Does this digital communication format work for you?” and “Do text reminders help you?”, with the ability to easily tweak messages based on response themes.
Every request was dealt with effectively and efficiently, enabling us to move at pace and deliver within our agreed timescale. Overall, it was a really positive process for such a large implementation.
