Health Call, a digital health company owned by the NHS, has introduced a waiting list validation tool aimed at helping NHS trusts optimise their elective recovery efforts. This solution is designed to address the challenge of long waiting lists and patient wait times. With over seven million patients currently on the NHS appointment backlog, it's crucial to maximise clinical capacity efficiently.
The waiting list validation tool offers trusts the ability to check in with patients in bulk to ascertain if their appointments are still necessary. This process allows trusts to gain a more accurate understanding of the true size of their waiting list. Often, patients wait so long for an appointment that it becomes unnecessary by the time it arrives. When patients fail to notify the trust of this, it results in "did not attend" instances, preventing the trust from utilising its capacity effectively.
The cloud-based solution eliminates the need for manual appointment validation procedures, such as telephoning patients. Healthcare teams can instead send SMS-based questionnaires to patients, inquiring about the necessity of their appointments and whether their symptoms have changed.
Claire Graham, Head of Customer Success at Health Call, emphasised that this digital validation solution aims to help trusts reduce their waiting lists significantly by proactively managing patient appointments and changes. The tool aims to ensure that appointments are allocated to patients who genuinely need them, thus optimising service delivery.
Notably, this tool complements the Health Call patient engagement platform, MyHealthCall Pep, and it doesn't require any local hardware installation on-site, making it a convenient and efficient addition to the healthcare system.
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