City View Medical Practice is the largest site within South and East Leeds General Practice, serving ~15,000 patients in Beeston. Operating in a community with higher‑than‑average deprivation and complex needs, demand is intense, prompting the practice to rethink access, mobilise teams in real time, and deliver faster, fairer care.
To keep pace with sustained, above‑average demand in Beeston, the practice adopted Redcentric’s hosted telephony and call recording solutions, pairing it with role‑based licences for patient support handlers.
We were able to generate a business case based on the call data and get approval to employ part-time staff to cover the biggest spike in calls during the day. I now have the flexibility to allocate staff to where the demand is.
The practice now uses individual staff licences, allowing people to log in separately. Instead of just four phones handling inbound calls, there can be up to 13, with staff logging in to take calls. This also means when someone is absent, other team members can log in and cover the gap.
Call analytics and reporting has transformed the way calls are managed. Giving complete visibility of a wide variety of metrics: calls offered, calls by time of day, call wait times, calls abandoned and calls by types. This has enabled analysis and allowed continuous improvement of call workflows within the admin of the system to deliver efficiencies.
Dashboards help staff work smarter and manage their workload. The wallboard shows call types alongside metrics such as wait times, abandon rates, and answered calls. This visibility shapes behaviours and helps people manage their time, deciding when to log in and take calls, when to switch to other tasks, and when to take a break. When call volumes are high, more staff can log in to handle calls, allowing for more flexible resourcing.
Our call stats have improved beyond recognition over the last 12 months. The beauty of the Redcentric system is we can carry on refining call flows. Call demand can change on a weekly basis, but the call stats help us to understand what’s going on and to see which call lines are busy, so that we can respond to changing patterns and resource lines effectively by getting additional staff to login to the system.
Analysis of call volumes has allowed different call options to be set up to channel inbound calls towards different services. For example, seven different call lines now route calls to: appointments, vaccinations, home visits, prescriptions, sick notes, medical secretaries, and test results. This has resulted in improvements in call handling, effective staff management and improved response times.
Using call analytics, the practice built the case to recruit part‑time staff for peak periods, cutting queues and wait times. Improving patient access, reducing pressure on staff, and supporting retention.
Call recordings provide governance and are easy for staff to access, allowing them to check conversation details. When errors or complaints arise, the team can review how consultations were handled, resolve issues quickly, and reinforce best practice.
“Between 8 and 9 am, it’s all hands-on deck to respond to patient calls as soon as we possibly can. Generally, there are no calls queueing beyond 10 am which is a great improvement. By changing some of the call options we’ve levelled out call volumes and we’ve been able to look at what we can do to drive volumes in different directions, so we can resource lines effectively.