Practices within the Leeds CCG are faced with ever increasing demand on their services. As a result, they are seeking new ways of delivering services by enabling collaboration.
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.
Technology which supports smarter working and sharing certain workloads across surgeries to provide patient services is increasingly seen as the way forward. Hosted telephony can deliver significant benefits to practices to help them to collaborate and communicate effectively. A project to identify and deploy a new solution to meet the CCG’s specific needs was approved.
Following implementation of the solution, feedback has been gathered via Leeds CCG and the ICB and three surgeries were interviewed by Redcentric. Management intelligence from the call analytics service has demonstrated quantifiable improvements. The three surgeries interviewed were:
An appendix for City View Medical Practice case study provides graphs and metrics demonstrating quantifiable efficiencies.
Since we made the changes to call workflows on our telephony, the number of complaints has dropped significantly. Complaints about call waiting times are now very rare.
The existing telephony system was over 10 years old and was no longer fit for purpose. It posed multiple challenges for the organisation:
Leeds CCG was looking for a solution which would:
A resilient service with 24/7/365 support was needed to ensure maximum service availability.
It’s given us a better understanding of what’s happening and allowed us to make decisions which drive efficiencies and improve outcomes for patients.
Redcentric’s hosted telephony platform was chosen and a total of 400 licences were issued across the ICB. Evaluation of the solution has demonstrated that there have been significant benefits, and these have driven efficiencies within surgeries who have adopted the solution.
Benefits extend across individual surgeries, PCNs, Leeds CCG, and the ICB. These are outlined below.
After an hour on the phone with the IT admin we had everything set up. We were able to answer calls from patients across the three practices. The service was invaluable.
Shared directory
Practices were struggling to contact each other easily because they had to make contact through busy receptionist teams. To collaborate effectively, a shared directory was needed to save time searching for numbers and provide easy access to other team members in different surgeries or across a variety of surgeries working as an extended team.
Benefits realised
The shared directory saved a lot of time. Practitioners could get through directly to colleagues and this reduced patient call waiting times by up to 15-20 minutes per call.
Minor surgery shared service
Two practices (Meanwood and Street Lane Surgery) wanted to combine resources to deliver a Minor Surgery service and manage it effectively by providing suitable levels of service availability for patients. Both were branch surgeries and belonged to the same practice, but they had separate phone systems. They needed an integrated phone system which allowed them to forward calls to each other.
Benefits realised
Integration of the two surgeries was achieved through service design and configuration. This allowed call routing to be implemented allowing Minor Surgery calls to be grouped and channelled to the relevant team members.
Extended access teams and virtual hubs
A number of requirements for virtual hubs required a solution to enable collaboration:
Several practices across Leeds wanted to provide virtual hubs which would deliver additional innovative services for patients. Initially three virtual hubs were created to deliver Pharmacy, Physiotherapy and Healthy Minds services for patients to access between 6-9pm, Saturdays and Sundays. This involved cross-skilled teams of GPs, nurses, and care assistants (at hospices) who needed to collaborate to deliver these services.
The NHS requirement to provide out-of-hours patient access to GPs meant surgeries needed to collaborate to provide a team consisting of surgery staff on rotation across several surgeries.
During the Covid pandemic, surgeries needed to work together to provide vaccination hubs.
Benefits realised
The telephony solution provided call routing, which allowed calls to be channelled to the virtual hubs, segregating calls from other inbound patient calls. The VoIP superuser at Leeds CCG had admin access to the solution and acted as a point of communication, collecting information which allowed the system to be configured to enable the routing. Call centres were set up using Webex licences, and this allowed the hubs to field calls from patients, with call diverts channelling calls into the hubs at the appropriate times of day.
The virtual hubs were so successful that the number of hubs has grown to about 20 over time. As an example, a social prescribing hub now allows patients to select this option and calls are routed to the team handling this service.
Configuration delivers much greater flexibility for surgeries and allows them to collaborate through call workflows directed towards a large variety of hubs. It has allowed centralised call management for surgeries at Christmas and bank holidays. Each hub has different opening times, and call flow configuration allows practices to work together to take calls in rotation to cover out-of-hours services, holiday periods and/or resourcing challenges due to staff absence/sickness.
Importantly, patients can access additional services which is improving patient care.
“The Redcentric telephony system meant we were much quicker in getting our vaccination hub up and running. We planned to use the telephony system to book appointments with as few staff as possible manning the service. After an hour on the phone with the IT admin we had everything set up. We were able to answer calls from patients across the three practices. The service was invaluable.”
Camilla Hawkes, Practice Manager, St Martins Practice
Hybrid working/new working practices
During Covid there was a need for all surgeries to enable remote working and after the pandemic to enable hybrid working from anywhere and enable new working practices.
In addition, groups of PCNs needed to work together to deliver vaccination hubs.
Benefits realised
A network of 10 groups of surgeries was established. These were issued with Redcentric’s Collaborate licences with standard call centre functionality. Licences were issued on a ‘needs’ basis to groups of PCNs.
Two types of licences were made available to enable remote working:
Enterprise enabled use of a desktop handset to take calls and Softphone enabled use of any mobile/desktop device.
Since the pandemic, this capability has enabled changes to working practices and joined up CCGs, for example, Calderdale and Kirklees, which were part of West Yorkshire ICB, were able to deliver a ‘Respite service’ by working in conjunction with the ‘Leeds ICB’.
Externally, the telephone system provides patient access to services using a central number which does not identify the staff location. It enables mobility while staff work from different locations and access to services for patients.
‘The Redcentric telephony system gives us a lot more flexibility. We can quickly make changes to messaging and channel calls to different teams and decide how we can adapt the way our teams work. It’s given us a better understanding of what’s happening and allowed us to make decisions which drive efficiencies and improve outcomes for patients.’
Lisa Lowe, Senior Administrative Assistant, West Leeds Family Practice
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.
Management Information
Monthly reporting by Leeds CCG entailed a lengthy process to combine data from different surgeries. This limited its ability to build a cohesive, comprehensive picture of patient demand and the practices’ ability to respond to patients. This was particularly important during Covid to determine how practices were coping
Benefits realised
Following the implementation of Redcentric’s call analytics reporting tasks were simplified and call analytics provided management intelligence for the ICB and CCG across surgeries and to individual surgeries which was used to drive efficiencies.
The ICB was able to look at demand management and to report on the trends in patient demand on a yearly, monthly, weekly, daily basis and hour by hour. This information was used to seek solutions for practices which were struggling.
Call reporting allowed analysis of volumes of inbound & outbound calls, call duration & wait times, missed calls and call handling efficiency both across individual surgeries and as a combined picture.
‘Since we made the changes to call workflows on our telephony, the number of complaints has dropped significantly. Complaints about call waiting times are now very rare.’
Steven Holt, Patient Support Manager, City View Medical Practice
Surgeries were able to validate funding requests for additional hardware or new solutions backed by evidence of need from the reporting. They were able to use data for workforce planning.
‘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.’
Steven Holt, Patient Support Manager, City View Medical Practice
Wall boards with the call analytics displayed allowed staff to self-manage time. They were able to quantify call and answer rates, abandon rates and channel resource to meet demand.
Analysis of calls has led to quantifiable call handling efficiencies and faster response times for patients.
For City View Medical, call routing has improved the utilisation of staff and prioritisation of calls, as well as enabling more calls to be channelled towards online services which are quicker for staff to respond to. Call analytics (presented in Appendix 1 of the case study) show that for City View Medical Practice:
‘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.’
Steven Holt, Patient Support Manager, City View Medical Practice
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.
Call recording
Surgeries could choose to take call recording.
Benefits realised
Surgeries have been able to manage complaints and provide better staff training using recordings.
‘The call recording is a brilliant tool, especially from a patient complaint perspective. You can listen to what’s been said and what’s been done. You can act on fact.
‘From a staff training point of view, the call recording is a very useful tool which has a very positive effect. Supervisors can listen to calls; we can identify training needs and support staff a lot more with coaching and best practice. It’s now used every day.’
Steven Holt, Patient Support Manager, City View Medical Practice
The Redcentric telephony platform allows future services to be added providing futureproofing for further needs. For example, the CallConnect GP service is under consideration. This would allow calls to be queued and then patient automatically called back, saving time for call handlers.
As further organisational changes take place in the future, the telephony service can be adapted to include new entities.
Call analytics allows continual refinement of workflows within practices and will provide intelligence to allow further improvement in efficiencies.
Supervisors can listen to calls; we can identify training needs and support staff a lot more with coaching and best practice. It’s now used every day.
