Telecoms specialists Voice Connect (www.voiceconnect.co.uk) created Patient Partner for GPs almost 10 years ago, and it is now used by over 2.5 million patients across the UK. The automated system allows patients to contact their surgery at any time of the night or day to book, cancel and change their appointments.

With over 50% of GPs in the UK now using an EMIS clinical database, the integration is good news for both surgeries and patients. The new integration status means that Patient Partner now fully amalgamates with all EMIS variations including   LV, PCS LAN PCS WAN, PCS (in Scotland) and Web.

Official estimates put the cost of missed patient appointments to the NHS at around £600 million a year.  Patient Partner was originally developed to help combat this issue, and the news that approval has been given for it to be used by so many surgeries is highly likely to have a positive effect on reducing DNAs across the UK.

Stefan Olsberg, MD of Voice Connect comments “Using Patient Partner has proved to be a very positive experience for many GPs.  Not only has it cut DNA rates and saved practices money, it has also given patients greatly improved access to the services they provide.  Now that we are able to integrate fully with so many additional practices, it should mean that we are able to improve the service that thousands of GPs can offer their patients.”

EMIS is the leading primary care software provider, holding 39 million patient records. The company works with carefully selected partners only after a series of rigorous tests have been passed. Voice Connect were established in 1991 and have worked closely with PCTs and GPs’ surgeries across the UK for over 20 years. They provide a range of unified communication services for doctors’ surgeries as well as local authorities and private organisations.

The surgery, which is situated on Pagoda Avenue, has 7,200 patients on its register. It has already introduced an online system for ordering repeat prescriptions at www.pagodasurgery.co.uk. The new phone service is the latest initiative designed to improve access for patients and enhance the overall patient experience. “Patient Partner will help ease call congestion by giving patients more choice in when they can call,” explains Deborah Taylor, Practice Manager at The Pagoda Surgery. “This frees up phone lines at traditionally busier times of day for important queries and emergencies.”

The automated system works by detecting spaces in the doctors’ diaries, allowing the patient to choose the appointment time which best suits them by pressing a button on their touch tone phone.

“We realise that some patients may prefer to book appointments in the traditional way and they may continue to do so if they wish,” comments Deborah. “However, by providing this round the clock service, we can offer greater flexibility for all our patients, including those who work unsociable hours. We also believe that it will free up valuable time for our receptionists to attend to patient care.”

A survey carried out by the DPP (Developing Patient Partnerships) and the Institute of Healthcare revealed that almost a quarter of a million patients across the country fail to attend appointments each week. “Patient Partner was developed to help with this issue,” explains Stefan Olsberg, Managing Director of Voice Connect. “By making it easier to contact the surgery, we hope that the new system will help to diminish the number of wasted appointments which has to be good news for patients.”

A teaching practice, Rushey Green Group Practice currently employs eleven doctors, three nurses, seven reception staff and four members of staff who work in general admin. It is a busy urban practice which also operates extended opening hours from 8am to 8pm, Monday to Friday in order to accommodate its needy patient base – and to offer the best possible service to local residents.

However, like many GP surgeries across the UK in both urban and rural areas, call congestion at peak times was a common problem at the practice, putting a lot of pressure on receptionists, particularly at peak call times like first thing in the morning when the surgery opened. Senior staff at Rushey Green were aware of the issue with the phones and decided that installing an automated appointment booking system would both complement the extended opening hours, and improve call handling at the surgery.

“We were keen to improve patient access which is an important target for all GP practices,” comments Antonia Makinde, Practice and Finance Manager at Rushey Green. “We hoped that the system would reduce pressure on our receptionists in terms of volume of calls by offering our patients more flexibility in when they could call.” Accordingly, the practice decided to go ahead with the service and first went live with Patient Partner in July 2009.

Change can be difficult, and Antonia and the partners had some concerns about how their patients would respond to the new automated system. “Whilst we still have a few patients who don’t like the system and would prefer to speak to a receptionist, many others really love it,” comments Antonia. “In fact, I would estimate that around one third of our appointments are booked using Patient Partner, which has had a significant and positive impact on reception. Our ability to handle calls at peak times and also throughout the day has really improved. In addition, it means that we can say to patients that they have no excuse for not cancelling their appointments as they can rearrange or cancel them at anytime, not just when we are open.”

The Patient Partner system has helped to enhance aspects of the day to day life of the practice, particularly reducing call congestion. This has had the knock on effect of freeing up time for the practice receptionists so they can carry out other important tasks as the system does the work of making the appointments. “We are still working on making the patients more aware of the system so more can use it,” comments Antonia.

Patient Partner’s best three features are:

1. Patients have the ability to book, cancel or change their appointments.

2. Patients have no excuse for not cancelling their appointment.

3. The good level of support from Voice Connect.

Staff at Rushey Green feel that Patient Partner has achieved what was originally hoped for from the system: patients now find it easier to contact the surgery and call handling and communication has generally improved, although there is still the possibility of a greater uptake of the service by patients who have not yet used it.

Antonia is also full of praise for Voice Connect as a company, and is pleased with how the whole transition process was managed. “We have had fantastic support from Voice Connect throughout: they respond to queries promptly, are responsive to our needs and open to ideas,” she says. “Really, it’s a case of so far, so good with the system.” Antonia would also advise any practice with similar access issues to consider installing Patient Partner. “I personally really like the system, so I’d say, just go for it!”

As part of the Patient Participation Groups initiative that has been set up by the coalition government, GPs are rewarded for getting feedback from their patients regarding the quality of service provided. However, the cost of reaching large numbers of patients from representative groups is difficult to achieve. The new automated survey service has been designed to make the whole process quicker and cheaper.

“We’ve worked with many areas of the NHS for more than two decades, but GPs have been a large focus for our business over the past eight years,” says Voice Connect’s Managing Director Stefan Olsberg. “This new service is a simple way to collect patient views with minimum cost and work. Because of its automated collection facility, the service almost completely eliminates staff involvement.”

The new survey module allows patients to answer automated questions about the performance of a surgery during a phone call or using a touch screen in the surgery. Surveys can be anonymous, and all results are automatically compiled into one central database. GPs receive £1.10 per patient registered at the surgery in both this and the next financial year.

The system can also be set to flag up special ‘at risk’ areas. For example, if a patient indicates that they are a heavy smoker, once they have completed the questionnaire they can be directed to reception to find out about stop smoking sessions offered by the surgery.

Established in 1991, Voice Connect has worked closely with PCTs and GPs’ surgeries across the UK for over 20 years. The company provides a range of unified communication solutions for doctors’ surgeries, including their popular automated telephone appointment booking system Patient Partner as well as Medical Messenger and Smart Mail, a mailing service developed especially for GP surgeries.

A report commissioned by the Department of Health says GPs’ administrative support teams should be radically altered to cut costs. The plan would involve centralising appointment bookings through a national call centre, clearing surgeries of thousands of staff.

However, doctors and surgery staff say the proposal is “flawed”. Unison, the public sector trade union, said that remote call centres could not provide the “very personal service” that patients needed.

The report by the NHS Confederation’s Foundation Trust Network looks at ways back office functions could be streamlined. It says the message to all NHS bodies is that they must “simplify, standardise and share” to save money.

The NHS is “highly fragmented”, with a total of £2.8 billion spent on back office functions. The trust, headed by Tony Spotswood, chief executive of Royal Bournemouth and Christchurch Hospitals, recommends: “There are substantial efficiency gains to be achieved through transforming GP back office functions, such as the potential to move towards regional and national GP appointment centres.”

A Unison spokesman said surgery staff not only made appointments. He said: “A call centre cannot begin to do the job these staff do.” Doctors and their support staff were more forthright. Dr David Iles from Southampton commented “Even your average alien would consider this hilarious stupidity.”

Stephan Olsberg MD of Voice Connect comments “There are far better ways to improve the efficiency of patients booking appointments with their GP. Systems such as our own Patient Partner allow around the clock access, giving the patient the ability to book, cancel or move their appointment without the need to speak to a receptionist or a call centre”

Church Street Surgery in Ware has introduced a new phone system which enables patients to call the practice at any time to book or cancel appointments. The system, known as Patient Partner, went live at the surgery in June. It has been specially designed to ease the problems that patients can face when trying to contact their GP, offering increased choice in how and when appointments are made.

The surgery has 8,600 patients on its register. It has already introduced an online system for booking appointments and ordering repeat prescriptions at www.churchstware.org. The new phone service is the latest initiative designed to improve access for patients and enhance the overall patient experience. “Patient Partner will help ease call congestion by giving patients more choice in when they can call,” explains Val Terry, Business Manager at Church Street. “This frees up phone lines at traditionally busier times of day for important queries and emergencies.”

The automated system works by detecting spaces in the doctors’ diaries, allowing the patient to choose the appointment time which best suits them by pressing a button on their touch tone phone. The system also integrates fully with the online booking and repeat prescription service.

“We realise that some patients may prefer to book appointments in the traditional way and they may continue to do so if they wish,” comments Val. “However, by providing this round the clock service, we can offer greater flexibility for all our patients, including those who work unsociable hours. We also believe that it will free up valuable time for our receptionists to attend to patient care.”

A survey carried out by the DPP (Developing Patient Partnerships) and the Institute of Healthcare revealed that almost a quarter of a million patients across the country fail to attend appointments each week. “Patient Partner was developed to help with this issue,” explains Stefan Olsberg, Managing Director of Voice Connect. “By making it easier to contact the surgery, we hope that the new system will help to diminish the number of wasted appointments which has to be good news for patients.”

White Medical Group is located just outside the border of Newcastle upon Tyne and consists of three sites: the main surgery is located in the village of Ponteland, with branch sites at Wylam and Stamfordham. The practice employs 6 doctors, 2 nurses and 19 admin staff for a patient list of just under 7,000 residents in total. With the three surgeries covering a large geographical area which includes both urban and rural communities, the patient demographic is varied.

The demands made on a modern GP practice are steadily increasing, and whilst the number of reception staff at White Medical Group had remained constant for some years, their workload was continually rising. The partners and practice manager decided that installing an automated phone appointment booking system could be one way of reducing this pressure, and so went live with their Patient Partner system in October 2009.

Although Patient Partner is installed at over 600 surgeries nationwide (with that number steadily rising), there were no surgeries in the area using Patient Partner at that time. This meant that the practice manager James Young was unable to see the system working in situ prior to installation.

“Although Voice Connect’s demonstration was very good, we weren’t certain that the reality would live up to it,” James explains. “We couldn’t go and see the system in action in a real surgery which made it hard to uncover any flaws, so it felt like a bit of a leap in the dark to have the system installed, particularly in relation to the integration with our clinical and phone systems.”

However, these concerns proved to be unfounded, and whilst it took a little adjustment to integrate the system with EMIS during installation, once installed everything has run efficiently. “Voice Connect ironed out the inevitable teething issues very quickly,” comments James. “Since going live we haven’t had any problems at all.  Everything has worked reliably – in fact, I have been very impressed with Voice Connect’s level of support.”

James also reports that the system has been well received by the majority of patients at the surgery and that uptake has steadily increased as patients become more familiar with Patient Partner. “Generally elderly patients can take a while to get used to the technology, but this has become easier with time,” he explains. “There was some initial concern that we would force people to use the service, but this was never going to be the case. The system is great and we find that once a patient has used it they never go back to the old system of ringing a receptionist. Some patients will always prefer speaking to a real person, so we have the best of both worlds by having both options. We plan to extend our marketing efforts with help from Voice Connect in order to continue increasing patient usage still further.”

Patient Partner’s best three features are:

1. The integration between the phone system and the clinical system.
2. The stability of the IT platform.
3. The ability to book appointments at any time which has also reduced receptionist workload.

James reports that Patient Partner has had a positive impact on call handling and general communication at all the surgeries, reducing call congestion, particularly at peak call times. The system has freed up time for receptionists, whilst making it easier for patients to contact the surgery. “The system has enabled us to monitor how we handle calls and make further improvements by providing useful statistics which allow phone usage to be closely monitored,” he adds.

“Our experience of Patient Partner has generally been very positive and if a surgery similar to ours was considering installing the system, I‘d advise them to go for it as it’s definitely worthwhile if you want to take some of the existing workload pressure off reception staff. Prior to installation, it’s worth thinking about how you market the service and how you maximise patient usage. Whilst Patient Partner isn’t cheap, it does provide good value for money. In fact, overall it’s an excellent system that does exactly what it says on the tin.”

The Chair of the Health Select Committee, the Rt. Hon Stephen Dorrell MP, visited Voice Connect to see for himself the automated telephone appointment booking system it provides for GPs’ practices.  Mr Dorrell visited the offices to learn more about how the company is working with GPs to improve patient access and reduce call congestion. The system, known as Patient Partner, is installed in over 600 GP practices across the UK.

The company’s board members met with Mr Dorrell during his 90 minute tour of the premises.  Voice Connect MD Stefan Olsberg was delighted to meet with the MP and have the opportunity to discuss the Government’s health plans.  “Mr Dorrell was able to tell us about his personal experiences of booking doctors’ appointments.  He seemed genuinely impressed by the time and cost savings that Patient Partner can offer GPs,” comments Mr Olsberg. “He was clearly aware of the issues surrounding both small businesses and the health sector and spoke with a refreshing honesty about both.”

Elected as Chair of the Health Select Committee in 2010, Mr Dorrell comments “Voice Connect is an interesting example of a company that is solving a very real problem; in their case problems around booking GP appointments by using technology.  During our meeting I learned a great deal about the lengths that they have gone to in working with clinical databases, practice managers and patients.  The result is that they appear to have created a product that saves money for practice managers and enhances the service available to patients.”

Voice Connect celebrated its 20^th year in business earlier in 2011.  The company also works with universities, police forces and local authorities across the UK. Most recently, the company has started developing mobile phone apps as well as continuing to extend its larger scale telecoms products.

Mr Dorrell visited the Voice Connect offices on Thursday 5th May and met the directors and key staff who demonstrated some of the company’s latest hi-tech developments.

The device allows lone workers to set a remote alarm on their mobile phone so that if they are not out of a meeting or in a location by a pre-planned time, a colleague will be notified that something may have gone awry.  In addition, the lone worker’s movements can also be traced online using a GPS signal sent from their phone.  “Regular signals sent from the phone are transmitted so that the whereabouts of the worker can be traced to within a few metres of their last signal and can be viewed on a Google Maps aerial view of the location,” explains Voice Connect’s Technical Director David Harrison. “Previous known locations can also be seen so that help can be quickly dispatched if required.”

Voice Connect first created a product to help lone workers almost a decade ago and their systems have proved popular with NHS trusts, utility companies and councils.  But until now smaller organisation such as estate agents, GPs or companies with a mobile external sales force have been unable to use such systems because of the number of users needed to make them viable.

“This new mobile app really changes things,” comments Voice Connect’s MD Stefan Olsberg. “It means that any organisation, large or small, can have a robust system in place to protect staff who work on their own away from the office. They are amongst the most vulnerable employees in the community, but now their location can be monitored and checked, with help sent on its way within seconds.”

In 2004, the authority set up iCAN (the Consumer Alert Network) to tackle illegal trading practices taking place in the local area.  Central to the success of this venture was the facility to open up lines of communication, enabling large numbers of the public to be contacted quickly. So, in addition to the quarterly ‘iCAN’ newsletter sent out to members, the authority needed the facility to issue regular updates and warnings to targeted groups at short notice.

After some research into the options available, Voice Connect’s VC Relay system was installed that same year. This system, used by police forces and Neighbourhood Watch schemes across the UK, enabled the network to quickly send out large numbers of messages to their database members via text, voicemail or e-mail.

Roger Mapleson, Consumer and Business Protection Manager for Warrington and Halton Trading Standards, explains how use of the system has grown since it was first installed. “We now have over 3,700 residents on the iCAN database using VC Relay to communicate with us and each other,” he says. “We have worked hard to establish relationships within the community, specifically with residents in the more deprived areas of the borough. We have been really pleased with the positive uptake of the scheme.”

So successful has the iCAN initiative with VC Relay been, that the neighbouring Halton Trading Standards Authority has joined with Warrington. “Staff at Halton work closely with us, using VC Relay and the model of the original iCAN scheme,” explains Roger. “They have direct access to our server and are able to operate VC Relay from their own PCs.” The additional revenue that this raised also enabled Warrington TS to upgrade the system. Trafford Metropolitan Borough also signed up to the system last year and are now building and developing their own iCAN using the system.

VC Relay is regularly used to warn people about various scams, doorstep crimes and illegal practices which go on in the town, as well as giving members relevant consumer advice. Two examples of recent incidents in which Warrington TS successfully used VC Relay to notify the public include the apprehension of the owner of a bogus damp proofing company which had been operating in the Cheshire region for over 10 years and the arrest of those responsible for a sham charity collection. In the first example, the use of VC Relay enabled Warrington TS to alert iCAN members to the damp proofing scam as soon as the company started cold calling and leafleting. In the second example, an iCAN member alerted the organisation to their suspicions about a clothing collection, allegedly by a national charity. The collections were monitored by TS staff and found to be bogus, resulting in an arrest.

VC Relay’s best three features according to Warrington Trading Standards:

1. The system is easy to use.
2. It has fantastic power to communicate, reassure and educate.
3. It makes it easy for members to feedback to us.

Based on the success with VC Relay, Warrington Borough Council have recently installed Voice Connect’s Lone Worker system which protects workers on site visits or those who work alone. As the council already had the core component of the VCII hub, adding the Lone Worker system was an economically sound decision. The system is currently being piloted by a section of staff in the authority.

Roger is very positive about the whole experience of using VC Relay and the impact that it has had on the iCAN initiative. “Voice Connect has been an excellent company to work with. They are constantly innovating and coming up with new solutions and have always sorted out any technical glitches quickly. We have every confidence in them as a company and VC Relay as a product and are happy to recommend them to other local authorities. Good communication is the cornerstone of iCAN’s success – VC Relay has played a significant part in enabling us to take our message out into the wider community.”