Sesui’s campaign into flexible working for a 24/7 NHS follows research that shows 1 in 5 UK doctors feel their current work life balance is poor and almost half believe current demands are unsustainable. However 45% believe that making patient calls from home could be the answer.
A key story to emerge from the campaign is Sesui’s work with London-based Jai Medical Centre (see attached case study). This five-surgery practice has:
· Adopted Sesui’s Virtual Contact Centre (VCC) to allow five specialist call handlers to answer calls across its five surgeries. In addition to improving the patient experience with no engaged tones, welcome messages and regular queue updates, the VCC has enabled Jai Medical to offer patients secure evening telephone appointments – amounting to 5,000 extra patient appointments a year.
· Installed 50 VoIP phones across five sites and adopted Sesui’s call management platform – Sesui Cloud Call Manager – to help its surgeries join up more effectively as one team. In doing so, Jai Medical has reduced call abandonment by 20% and improved its answering rate to 75% of patient calls within 60 seconds – in line with rigorous QR8 targets set for Urgent Care providers.
Practice Manager Suresh Vaghela said: “At least 90% of our GPs are working parents, so we had to think outside the box on how we could give them a better work life balance while addressing unmet patient needs. Flexible working is how we’ll start to make a difference.”
He added: “Our GPs securely access patient records from home so they can do their admin there – patient letters, reviewing results, booking consultations. They also work two extra hours a week from home to provide patient telephone consultations between 8pm and 10pm; amounting to 5,000 extra patient appointments a year.”
Supporting Sesui’s flexible working campaign, Dr Simon Abrams, Chair of Urgent Health UK said: “This is an important step in helping clinicians maintain a closeness with their patients and the communities they serve; preserving the personalisation of care that makes the NHS so effective. Flexible systems serve patients and clinicians, enabling both to make best use of modern environments. Technology can make a difference in the NHS, especially now when we need it most. We should all be thinking about how we design our systems to match the changes in the way ordinary people connect with technology.”
Sesui’s research also found flexible working through the cloud would:
· Improve the patient journey as doctors can follow their patients’ treatment pathways (48%)
· Allow doctors to spend longer with their patients (43%)
· Reduce waiting times (42%)
Mr Lee Bryant, Sesui Managing Director added: “Phone and video consultations have the potential to play an even bigger part in helping GPs manage the 1.3 million daily patient consultations. GPs have in the past been mainly desk-bound at the practice or in a health centre somewhere, but it doesn’t have to be that way; the technology’s there to help relieve some of the pressure on them and their patients. By communicating through the cloud, clinicians can flexibly and securely make patient phone and video calls in a way that meets theirs and their patients’ needs.”
