Patient Partner gives White Medical Group ‘the best of both worlds’

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.”

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