NHS Highland hails £1 million success in slashing hospital waiting lists through Netcall Patient Hub
A service that helps NHS Highland cut hospital waiting lists is being hailed as a £1 million success.
The health authority’s waiting list validation service, first rolled out to all outpatient clinics in 2022, saw an 81 per cent response rate from patients.
NHS Highland say the Netcall Patient Hub system sees waiting lists vetted to ensure that only patients who still require to be seen remain listed.
By doing so, it has avoided £1m worth of costs by allowing others to be seen more quickly, with unnecessary appointments avoided.
After a successful pilot with dermatology, the service was rolled out across other areas and became fully operational in 2023/24.
It involves contacting patients directly via email or text asking a pre-defined set of questions around their current waiting list status.
This can include whether they still wish or require to be seen and whether there are any periods of time when they are unavailable to be seen.
The patient responds through a patient portal and this is fed directly back to the hub support team operated from within NHS Highland’s patient booking service.
Since going live, more than 5000 patients no longer needing treatment have asked to be removed or discharged.
Jamie Forrester, head of health records for NHS Highland, said: “Vetting our waiting lists has created more accurate, and shorter, lists. Validating our lists ensures patients are seen in priority order and it also helps reduce our ‘did not attend’ (DNAs) and our short notice cancellations.
“No patient is removed from the list without checking in with their clinician and, for those who would rather not be contacted in this way, our standard communication methods remain in place.
The response rate from our patients has been excellent with 81 per cent engaging with the system.
“With the number of patients no longer requiring to be seen, we’ve avoided the wastage of the equivalent of approximately £1m worth of costs and been able to redirect this resource into seeing patients that require access to specialist services.”
On average, specialties have seen a discharge rate of nine per cent with some areas, such as ophthalmology, achieving 15 per cent.
Mr Forrester added: “Individuals may want removed from the waiting list if they have already had treatment elsewhere, their condition has cleared up or they been seen and treated via different pathway.
“As well as clearing up some space on our waiting lists it has also freed up clinical and administrative time which also has that knock-on effect in the quality of care provided for our patients.”
