by Health Call on 19th October 2023Why digital waiting list validation is a quick win for elective recovery
With 7M patients waiting for their NHS appointments, it’s crucial to use every tool at your disposal. This article covers how using a digital tool like waiting list validation can provide a cost-effective solution to support elective recovery and deliver quick wins to help patients get seen quicker.
So, what exactly is digital waiting list validation, and how can it help reduce your outpatient waiting lists?
Digital Waiting List Validation tools enable Trusts to check in with patients en masse to determine if they still need their appointment to reduce DNAs (did not attend) and unnecessary appointments. While no digital solution is a silver bullet and can replace the work of incredible NHS clinicians, it can aid busy teams and make life easier, releasing capacity and resources.
- Understand the true size of your waiting lists: Often, patients on waiting lists may no longer require their appointment by the time it comes around; the likelihood of this increases the longer patients have been waiting for outpatient or surgical care. Maybe their symptoms changed, or they sought treatment privately or no longer require care. Digitally validating your waiting lists allows you to check in en masse with patients to sift out any no longer needed appointments. It’s a simple solution that can free up hundreds of appointments to ensure every appointment counts.
- Streamlined Patient Management: Gone are the days of sifting through paper-based lists and manual entries. Validating waiting lists digitally, you can focus more on patient care and less on administrative tasks.
- Support NHS Patient Communication Best Practice: Checking in with patients digitally enables people to respond in their own time at convenience, increasing engagement. Health Call’s tool allows branded questionnaires with the same look and feel as the NHS App to promote trust and create a seamless patient experience.
- Data Accuracy and Validation: Ensuring accurate patient data is paramount for effective care. Digital waiting list validation tools automatically validate data, preventing duplication and errors.
- Time and Resource Savings: Manually validating waiting lists consumes significant staff time; administrative staff must handle patient data and call through patient lists. This is cumbersome and leaves room for human error and duplication. Health Call’s solution autogenerates all questionnaires and sends them by SMS in a single click- eliminating the need to create users/forms one by one manually). By automating waiting list validation, you can redirect resources towards direct patient care.
- Easy Integration and Scalability: Implementing new systems can be daunting, but a well-designed digital waiting list validation tool is designed for easy integration. It’s as simple as providing a user/password, eliminating the need for complex installations. Moreover, these tools can scale seamlessly to national standards, ensuring you’re ready for growth.
- Comprehensive Audit Trail: This digital tool provides an entire audit history, allowing you to track upload events, view patient amendments, and export activities. This level of transparency enhances accountability and facilitates compliance.
- Gain insight into patients and their behaviour: view historical forms, patient demographics, and unopened/completed forms—the ability to search and filter by status, speciality and time range within a comprehensive dashboard interface.
You can find out more about our digital Waiting List Validation here. Get in touch with [email protected] to arrange a demo.