Making Bradford a digital-first Trust

Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust are continuously looking for ways to make the patient experience better. They already had ideas on how technology could increase patient engagement and improve the experience, but how to tackle them and in which order was still a question.

 

Bringing in DrDoctor as a technology partner who understands the NHS means that Bradford could maximise the benefits in the long term with a much needed roadmap. Working closely with the team at Bradford, a plan was quickly put in place

The first area targeted was appointment letters. With around 1.5m letters sent every year, it presented a big opportunity for the Trust to reduce the £700,000 annual spend on printed letters.

 

The DrDoctor Digital by Default model was implemented, which notifies and sends all patients their hospital letters on the DrDoctor Patient Portal first. This model is fail safe - if the patient does not view the letter online within a set timeframe, or if they had already set their letter preferences to print, they would be sent a paper letter automatically. This ensures that no patient misses any important communications.

 

After a quick technical integration and a patient communications campaign, a pilot phase was started. Feedback found that patients were delighted to have a choice, and being able to view their letters anytime, on any device.

Once patient letters had moved to a digital model, the focus switched to digitising appointment services with DrDoctor Scheduling. This required building automated notifications that remind patients of upcoming appointments on multiple channels. This also allowed more relevant information to be shared with patients prior to their appointments.

Patients now automatically receive appointment reminders via SMS, email or by viewing details on the Patient Portal. While reducing the DNA rate was a factor, the key outcome was to provide more contextual information to patients. A customised SMS message reassures patients so they know exactly what stage of their care journey they were in.
 
Providing this information on a clinic-by-clinic basis was key to improving the patient experience. For example, all SMS messages in Paediatrics now provide a specific number for certain consultants, cutting out a step for patients.