Voice Connect, who has been trading since 1991 is celebrating 20 years of trading this month (February).  The company, who supply computer telephony to private and public companies across the UK, now employ 35 staff in three units at their head office in Leicestershire.

Managing Director Stefan Olsberg attributes the company’s success in such a fast moving market to the fact that their products and services are continually updated to keep abreast of advances in technology.  “Since we started out fax machines have long since been replaced in most companies by text messaging and email,” comments Mr Olsberg. “In this industry more than most, you have to adapt to the constant change that surrounds us. We know we have to update our products if we are to remain successful in business and so we regularly introduce new services including text messaging, email, mobile phone apps and Smartmail.”

Voice Connect are specialists in the health sector and work with NHS trusts and GP surgeries all over the country. They also work with other areas of the public sector including local government, police and higher education, numbering the Metropolitan Police and the Houses of Parliament amongst their customer portfolio.

The company’s most popular product is their automated telephone appointment booking system known as Patient Partner, which is installed at approximately 1 in 10 GPs’ practices in the UK. The system enables patients to book, check or cancel appointments at any time of the day or night, even when the practice is closed. The company also developed VC Relay which is widely used by the police, local authorities and organisations such as Neighbourhood Watch to communicate with large numbers of the public. Looking to the future, the technical division continue to develop new products and are about to launch a new service for dentists in the spring.

Voice Connect was originally founded by Mr Olsberg, Financial Director Geoff White and David Harrison who heads up the development and technical division. “When we set up Voice Connect, we had a vision for designing computer telephony solutions to help organisations become more efficient and save money,” comments David. “Back then what seemed futuristic now seems commonplace and I am proud that some of the products we devised are now widely used and integral to an organisation’s communications strategy.”

The three original directors Stefan Olsberg, Geoff White and David Harrison have been joined as directors by Sales Director Paul Trayler who was appointed to the board in 2000 in recognition of his value to the company.

Blackwater Medical Centre is located in the town of Maldon in East Essex. The surrounding area is largely rural, including some significant wildlife conservation areas, and also attracts many sailing enthusiasts. The centre itself is one of two surgeries in the town and employs six full time GPs and one part time doctor in addition to a total of 22 staff in a range of clinical and administrative roles. There are over 14,000 residents from the town and surrounding villages on the patient register: the patient demographic is predominantly elderly.

The Partners and Practice Manager at Blackwater Medical Centre were looking for ways to reduce call congestion and make it easier for patients to arrange appointments. They felt that an automated telephone system, in the form of Patient Partner, could help with this common problem. After meeting with personnel from Voice Connect and seeing what Patient Partner could do, they decided to go ahead with the service, installing it in March 2009.

Since this time, Practice Manager Lesley Beale reports that the service has lived up to expectations and is working well at the practice. “We anticipated that Patient Partner would benefit staff by easing pressure on the switchboard, and releasing more time to attend to other essential duties which enhance patient care,” she comments.  “The general reaction from patients has also been very positive. There were some initial issues with dates of birth for twins, triplets and elderly people born before 1909, but these have all been resolved very quickly by Patient Partner. The system has achieved our objective of improved access by making it easier for our patients to get in touch with us and make appointments, and our patients seem very satisfied with the service. It has also improved the speed with which we are able to handle calls as people are now able to bypass reception and make appointments automatically.”

Lesley believes that the service is an important step forward in offering patients improved choice and that, as word of the system continues to spread, that it will play an increased role in further improving call handling efficiency. “We feel that Patient Partner could do more to reduce congestion at peak times, but I think this is purely because the service has not been well advertised by the reception staff as yet – the patients need to know about the system and be encouraged to use it for it to have maximum impact.  Hopefully this is now resolving and the system is becoming better known amongst our patients.”

Patient Partner’s top three features are:

 1)  Availability to ring at anytime 24/7.

 2)  Improved patient choice.

 3)  Patients don’t need to speak to receptionists thus freeing up their time.

Lesley is impressed by Patient Partner’s functionality and when asked, can’t think of any way in which the service could be improved although she mentions that the automatic back up function, which backs up their clinical system daily for a short period of time in the middle of the night could be inconvenient for any patient wishing to call at that time.  This is because Patient Partner requires access to their clinical system and cannot obtain it during back up times.  “Obviously our clinical system has to be backed up so there is nothing that can be done about this, but it could be annoying should a patient choose to phone at this particular time.”

This minor, unavoidable technical issue aside, Lesley is very pleased with the system and feels that it does what was promised. “We have found Patient Partner to be an innovative service which gives our patients increased choice.  If used correctly, the system can save patients time and money, particularly at the high call volume times which can be problematic for any surgery.  It also offers our patients the opportunity of getting appointments quickly and easily. It is no longer necessary for patients to have to ring at 8am and so alleviates the congestion and rush in the mornings.”

In fact, Lesley is so impressed with the service, that she would have no hesitation in recommending it to others. “If a surgery like ours was considering switching to Patient Partner I would encourage them to do it as the system does improve patient choice.  In a nutshell, I think it’s great!”

Scotland could easily go its own way without affecting the rest of the UK, according to a new map of the nation’s telephone calls.

Scientists from MIT, Cornell University and University College London have created a map based on a huge database of 12 billion anonymous fixed line call records. The map shows how much people of the UK interact with each other.

The most striking aspect of the findings is that Scotland is very separate from the rest of UK, with less than a quarter of calls going outside its national boundary.

“The difference between Scotland and Wales is striking. Based on our landline data, Scotland is very separated from the rest of Great Britain: just 23.3 per cent of all call time placed or received there goes to or comes from another part of the country,” said Carlo Ratti, director of the MIT SENSEable City Lab and one of the paper’s authors.

“Conversely, Wales, in spite of its unique cultural and linguistic heritage, is well integrated with its English neighbours to the East,” he added.

Stephan Olsberg, MD of Voice Connect comments “This study shows an interesting snapshot of how the country communicates with itself.”  Voice Connect have worked with GPs to improve their patient communication across the country and have systems in universities, schools, hospitals, colleges and companies in every county of Britain.

Thousands more people are waiting longer than 18 weeks for hospital treatment from the time of referral by their GP, early indications show.

The Department of Health scrapped central monitoring of 18 weeks in June but said patients would not expect to return to long waiting times. NHS trusts no longer have to prove they are treating patients within 18 weeks.

An analysis of figures in Pulse magazine shows 45,000 patients missed out on treatment within 18 weeks during September, up 15% from 39,000 in July.

Some 12.6% of patients needing orthopaedic or trauma treatment and 10.6% needing oral surgery waited more than 18 weeks.

Chaand Nagpaul, from the British Medical Association’s GP committee, said trusts were already taking advantage of the fact the target had gone.

“We’re getting reports of trusts delaying treatment so they can address financial problems.

The Government is engaging in double speak – removing targets on one hand but committed to patients’ rights (through the NHS Constitution) on the other.”

Richard Hoey, editor of Pulse, said: “The previous government’s targets weren’t always popular among doctors since they reduced the flexibility to deal with individual patients according to their needs.

But what targets did do was provide a level of protection for patients, by preventing primary care trusts from delaying operations to save money.

Patients who find themselves stuck on a waiting list can take recourse to the NHS Constitution, which guarantees them treatment in 18 weeks, but they may have to take legal action to do so.”

Stephan Olsberg, MD of Voice Connect comments “The NHS has long strived for a culture of continuous improvement. That means ensuring patients get the timely and appropriate access to the care that they need.  Patient Partner is the first step in the process to ensure that waiting times for the public are kept to a minimum and that they don’t have an unnecessary wait to contact their GP”.

Patients could be forced to make doctors’ appointments through remote call centres under an efficiency drive to save the NHS £600 million.

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”

71% of practice managers think that budgets will be tighter in the coming 12 months – yet 40% say they are likely to invest in technologies that will save the practice time, labour and money.

With the current wave of changes in all areas of the NHS, what can practice managers do to improve service whilst reducing costs? Many would see the new age of austerity as a reason for cutting back spending on technology. Few would mourn the wasted millions that have been spent on expensive, ineffective IT products within the public sector.  However, there are many other products which are starting to come into their own as they demonstrate real cost savings and patient enhancement for GP surgeries across Britain.

Whilst some new technology has promised almost unlimited benefits and delivered tiny rewards, there are certain technologies which have been quietly saving money, improving service and generally making life easier for practices and their patients. Probably the best example of this is Patient Partner, which has been tackling several very real problems for GPs. Patient Partner, and other related products from Leicestershire based company Voice Connect, have been making a real impression on surgeries, with over 500 customers across the UK. In Voice Connect’s recent survey, 100% of customers reported that Patient Partner has given patients a greater choice, and as a result patient attitude to attendance has improved.

Patient Partner works by integrating with a surgery’s clinical database. It interfaces with the telephone system and appointments manager system, enabling patients to book, check, change or cancel appointments themselves using their telephone keypad at any time of the day or night – whether or not a receptionist is there to answer the call. For example, a patient could call up at four o’clock in the morning to book an appointment for later that day when the doctor or nurse has been made available for appointments. By entering their phone number and date of birth, the system identifies the patient and is able to offer appointments that the practice has made available to the system. The patient is not only able to make an appointment at the time that suits them best, they also avoid the irritation of the engaged tone or holding for extended periods of time whilst a busy and stressed receptionist attempts to process the request.

Commuters in particular report the frustration of being unable to find out the availability of appointments before they have to set off for work. Patient Partner empowers the patient to book an appointment the night before. In this scenario, the system not only helps the patient to avoid these frustrations but also has the effect of reducing calls to the practice in the morning, and potentially taking pressure off the extended hours appointments.

An added benefit for GPs is that using Patient Partner can result in a drop in DNA rates because patients are able to cancel appointments that they no longer require. Not only does this reduce wasted appointments, it also frees up additional spaces that other patients can book with their GP, thus easing waiting times at the surgery.

Surgeries that have installed Patient Partner report up to 80% of available appointments are booked through the system. Each time a patient does this, the receptionist’s time can be spent either dealing with other patients who need more assistance or carrying out other duties within the practice. As a result, patients obtain a better service and frequently report higher levels of satisfaction with their GP.

Voice Connect’s recent survey also reveals that 93% of customers, who have had the system for 12 months, have experienced a reduction in calls to reception. It is always difficult to see how short the payback time for a system such as this is, but most practices report that within a few months of patients getting used to the system they couldn’t do without it.

Another example of how Voice Connect can help GPs both save money and improve efficiency is through the use of the new service they offer known as VC Smart Mail, which allows surgeries to send out letters without having to physically print, stamp and post them themselves. A surgery can send out letters to selected groups of patients or send a single letter via their PC, and choose when the letters need to be sent out. The letters are printed, enveloped and posted off-site. This not only frees up the administration staff of the surgery to do other tasks, it works out as a saving of up to 40% per letter for the surgery. With surgeries sending out up to tens of thousands of letters over the course of a year, this saving can add up to significant sums in addition to releasing administrative staff time to do other possibly more important tasks.

Whilst of course it is great to save money, patient care has to remain a surgery’s primary concern. Fortunately, both solutions mean that the patient is experiencing a superior service, and in the case of Patient Partner, is offered more choice. So, the combination of both saving money and improving patient service is possible when the right type of technology is used.

NHS cancer care in England is getting better according to a report by the National Audit Office. But the NAO warns that a lack of reliable statistics is holding back further improvements. It estimates that cancer care cost the NHS in England £6.3bn in 2008-09.

See details of the report from the BBC here

Improved patient communication is thought to be one of the reasons for the improvement.

Dapdune House Surgery finds that Patient Partner ‘does exactly what it says on the tin’

Dapdune House Surgery www.dapdune.co.uk is located in central Guildford near to the University of Surrey campus. The surrounding area is urban with an increasingly mixed demographic and comes under the control of Surrey PCT. With a current patient base of over 11,500, the practice is large and busy. At present, there are 7 GPs and 3 GP registrars, plus an additional team of 15 support/ admin staff and 15 ancillary staff which include health visitors, practice and district nurses and community midwives.

Like many GP practices across the UK, Dapdune House Surgery experiences a surge of telephone calls at certain times of the day, with the peak time on Monday morning. With so many patients phoning to make appointments at specific times, Practice Manager Duncan Mann and the practice partners felt that one way of relieving call congestion would be to introduce an automated appointment booking facility. Having looked at the Patient Partner system, the first on the market to offer this service, the Dapdune management team decided that the system was what they needed and went ahead with installation in February 2007

“We decided to implement the Patient Partner system because we wanted to improve access for our patients and make it easier for them to get in touch with us,” comments Duncan Mann. “However, our primary motivation was to relieve the burden on our busy reception staff, especially at peak call times. We didn’t enter into it lightly: to ensure that the system was right for us, we visited a neighbouring practice to check out how it stacked up in real life so we could see it working in situ.”

Since installing the system, the surgery reports that it has helped with many of their communication issues. “Patient Partner is working well for us, although we probably haven’t been as proactive in promoting the service as we should. We do encourage patients who visit our website to use the service, particularly at busy times such as first thing on Monday morning. There’s no question that it has helped us to reduce call congestion at peak times and has eased the burden on our receptionists whilst our patients now find it easier to contact the surgery. We would like to see a greater take up of the service out of hours, but to achieve this we really need to take the initiative and advertise the facility more extensively as it is such a useful option for both the practice and our patients.”

Given how Patient Partner has eased communication between the practice and its patients, Duncan is surprised that the patient reaction hasn’t been more openly enthusiastic. “We haven’t had a great deal of patient reaction – it has been strangely muted,” he explains. “This may be a positive sign as I presume people would make their feelings known if they didn’t like the system. Patients have become used to what technology can do and tend to expect facilities such as online booking so that may also be a factor.  I do receive occasional comments that it could be more patient friendly, but in my experience it is hard to see how, given the sophistication of the software needed to run the system.”

Patient Partner’s top three features

1. It is a stable and reliable system.
2. The level of support from Voice Connect.
3. The ease with which the system can be configured.

Duncan is also pleased with the support from Voice Connect. “On the whole, we have been well supported by the Voice Connect team throughout,” he says. “The system has been efficient and relatively trouble free. The reports that accompany the system are useful and provide us with valuable feedback to help us make the most of it – although it would be good to have proactive generation of reports delivered via e-mail.”

Finally, Duncan has this advice for other practices who may be considering implementing Patient Partner. “To find out if the system is really for you, talk to other existing users to ensure that you understand the benefits and limitations of the system. You also need to spend some time thinking through how you will introduce it to patients to ensure that you make the most of its capabilities. For us, Patient Partner has relieved the pressure on our phone lines and has improved communication – in fact it does exactly what it says on the tin.”

Smart Clinic: ‘all walk-in clinics should have this installed’ says Streatham Hill Health Centre

Lambeth PCT Reproductive and Sexual Health Service delivers a range of free and confidential sexual health services to women and men, including testing and treatment for sexual infections as well as contraception and pregnancy advice. The service is administered across four walk-in clinic sites, with its headquarters at Streatham Hill Health Centre. The centre, which opened in November 2008, is part of a £600,000 refurbishment project by NHS Lambeth with support from the Guys & St Thomas’ Charity Modernisation Initiative.

At present the clinics employ a total of 19 doctors and staff in a range of roles and across the four sites. The Lambeth area has a relatively high rate of teenage pregnancy and STIs and so the service has an undertaking to support young people. The clinics work with a mixed demographic of residents from across the region, including Polish, black Caribbean, black African, white British and Portuguese.

The clinic managers felt that installing an automated registration and triage system such as Smart Clinic would be a positive move, improving patient access and promoting self management amongst its users. However, given the sensitive nature of clients’ medical issues, they also had some concerns about how secure people would feel using the service and whether the uptake would justify its installation.

“We weren’t sure how confident our clientele would feel using a computerised system to register their attendance without the traditional receptionist interaction,” explains Service Co-ordinator Elizabeth Wilson. “However, we decided that the benefits made it worthwhile and installed Smart Clinic (known in Lambeth as Q-Smart) in June 2009. The ‘go live’ day went extremely well, and since that time I’m pleased to report that the majority of our clients have taken to the new registration process easily. There has been some need for client interaction in a few cases in which users have language barriers or difficulties spelling their address or date of birth, but these have been quickly dealt with.”

Elizabeth is delighted with the way that the system is working at the service’s four sites and feel that it has achieved all that they had hoped for and more. “Smart Clinic has more than lived up to our expectations. We have used it successfully for auditing purposes and it has also helped us to fulfil the Department of Health drive to increase access for young people. In fact, the Smart Clinic initiative has been particularly well received by our young clients. In addition, we have found it simple to make ongoing changes according to client need/feedback to ensure that the system fully meets our requirements.”

Installing the system has enhanced many areas of the clinic’s work. It has reduced the amount of time that receptionists need to spend with clients, thereby freeing up their time to attend to other important tasks within the clinic. It has also improved the information for patients as they are able to see where they are in the queue and how long they are likely to have to wait. “Staff are now able to assess and manage waiting time more effectively,” adds Elizabeth. “Smart Clinic gives us accurate data on waiting times; it enables clinical staff to observe the volume of clients waiting and to assess which clients can be seen due to staffing skill mix. It also enables us to fast track young people into the clinic where appropriate and supports and promotes self management amongst our clients.”

Smart Clinic’s three best features are:

1. Promotes self management, a key area for the department.
2. Improves patient flow.
3. Improves patient experience.

Elizabeth also has high praise for Voice Connect and its staff. “The team at Voice Connect has been superb! The level of skill is impressive and the turnaround time on any requests we make is excellent. We are always looking at ways to improve patient flow and Smart Clinic is instrumental in facilitating this process.  We regularly look at ways to improve the system and this is fed back to the Voice Connect team who act on change very quickly.”

If a clinic was in a similar position and considering implementing Smart Clinic, Elizabeth would have no hesitation in recommending it to them. “It is an excellent system which helps to alleviate congestion, improve staff morale, improve patient access and promotes self management. In my opinion, all walk-in clinics should opt to have this system installed.”

Low doses of aspirin taken to reduce the risk of heart attacks and strokes can also lower the risk of colon cancer, British researchers reported on Thursday. They found that aspirin reduced the number of cases of colorectal cancer by a quarter and cut colon cancer deaths by a third.

See here for more details.

Patient Partner from Voice Connect is used to help improve communications to patients – including offering advice to patients whilst on hold to book an appointment.  The on hold information can be targeted at specific groups – including those at risk from heart attack & stroke.