“The Silent Receptionist... working away in the background,handling calls that receptionists would normally handle”

P A T I E N T P A R T N E R

Esther Jackson - Practice Manager

What is Patient Partner?

Patient Partner is a system that allows yourpatients to book, cancel, check or changeappointments at any time, night or day usingtheir telephone. The system is a PC/Serverbased solution, which connects to yourpractice’s telephone system. It also integrateswith your electronic appointment book, ensuringthat it can operate in ‘real time’.

At a glance

Patient Partner will help your practice to:

• Extend reception opening hours

• Ease the pain of early morning congestion

• Manage, improve and ease telephoneaccess

• Promote and administer appointments forseasonal/specific clinics

Extend reception opening hours

Annie Taylor, a mother with two young children,wakes up at 7am and finds that her youngestdaughter is unwell.

Even though her surgery is closed, Annieimmediately telephones them and selects theoption to book an appointment. She identifiesher daughter by using her telephone keypad tokey in their contact telephone number and herdaughter’s date of birth, which is informationshe knows off the top of her head.

Annie then goes on to book the first availableappointment with any doctor and hangs up thetelephone.

“I like the fact that Patient Partner gives ourpatients the ability to manage theirappointments 24 hours a day.” Suzanne Ayles - Practice Manager

The maximum amount of time Patient Partner isavailable to patients is 24 hours a day, 7 days aweek, 365 days a year. The only time thesystem is unavailable is during essential clinicaldatabase back up periods.

Through the use of Patient Partner, you increasepatient access, whilst remaining in control of thesystem and the allocation of appointments. So,even when your practice is closed, PatientPartner is available to your patients, allowingthem to book, cancel, check and change thetimes of their appointments.

Ease the pain of early morning congestion

It’s 8.30am, your receptionists are alreadydealing with patients that have arrived at thesurgery, but the queue of waiting patientscontinues to grow. The telephones are ringingconstantly and the stress felt by both staff andpatients rises rapidly.

“Now that our surgery use Patient Partner, wefind that up to a third of appointments arebooked before we arrive at the surgery eachmorning.” Heather King - Practice Manager

Patient Partner supplies your practice withvirtual receptionists who will work for 24 hours aday, 7 days a week booking, cancelling,checking and changing appointments for yourpatients.

Many practices have found that it takesapproximately three months until patientsbecome aware of the availability of PatientPartner.

“the around the clock availabireduces pressure... relieving p

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Patient Partner changes the times at whichpatients contact your practice to book theirappointment, spreading calls over the whole dayand consequently easing the pain caused by theearly morning rush.

“Now the patients are used to Patient Partner,they are booking appointments at the weekend,the night before or even just before the surgeryopens. This has meant that it is nowconsiderably easier for people trying to getthrough on the phones (for non-appointmentrelated queries) to speak to a receptionist.

We did originally think uptake would be slow -this has not been the case - within 3 months75% of available on the day, and book ahead,appointments were being booked through PatientPartner.”Laurie Brown - Practice Manager

lity of your virtual receptionistpain for staff and patients”

Did you know... a significant proportion oftelephone calls to your practice come frompatients checking the times of theirappointments.

Practices that use Patient Partner cut down thenumber of telephone enquiries they receive atthe start of the day, by advising patients to usePatient Partner to check the times ofappointments for themselves. This is becausethe system automatically announces the timesand dates of existing appointments.

Manage, Improve and Ease TelephoneAccess

“The initial benefit for us was the reduction intelephone calls coming into the practice, as thecalls for appointments were filtered out andtaken by Patient Partner.

This had two effects, firstly the service improvedas people weren’t waiting as long to get throughby phone and secondly everyone’s humourimproved. Patients weren’t as annoyed overwaiting times and consequently staff were notso stressed. Another benefit was that for thefirst time we had an insight into the amount ofcalls that were coming in and at what times ofday we were busiest.”Esther Jackson - Practice Manager

Full reporting with statistics is a part of PatientPartner, allowing you to monitor the totalnumber of:

• Patients that selected the option to usePatient Partner

• Appointments booked• Appointments cancelled

“Patient Partner has saved the Practice time byfreeing up reception staff to undertake otherduties, thereby enhancing patient care. Theexcellent reporting facility gives valuableinformation about when and how many calls aremade, which allows our practice to realign itsstaffing structure to deal with patient demand.”Drag Crnomarkovic - Business Manager

Voice Connect

Voice Connect

“now your patients can book an appointment at your surgery...

without the stress”

Patient Partner also enhances your currenttelephone system, by implementing (orimproving existing) ‘welcome messages’ and‘option menus’.

The presence of a welcome message meansthat when patients telephone your practice, theywill be (if they are not already) greeted by anautomated telephone greeting. The advantagesare that patients are all greeted in a consistentmanor and every patient that telephones thepractice receives the same information, i.e.emergency numbers, opening/closing times andother valuable details.

When your patients telephone your practice,menu options will direct them to the servicesthey require. The first mandatory menu optionwill be for Patient Partner. This promotes theimportance of the system to patients andencourages them to go on and book theirappointments using it.

Promote and administer appointments forseasonal/specific clinics

Patient Partner has additional features that willhelp your practice to promote and administerseasonal and or specific clinics, such as Flu,Asthma and Diabetes.

It is essential that target groups of patientseligible for each seasonal/specific clinic arenotified of their existence and such actions helptowards the Quality and Outcomes Framework(QOF) of the new GP contract. Therefore, anadditional solution for promoting clinics knownas Patient Partner Text is available with thePatient Partner system.

Details of clinics can be recorded with ease andare played to patients during the practice’sautomated telephone greeting.

This form of promotion ensures that everypatient who telephones your practice hears upto date information regarding the current clinicsavailable and can simply select the option tobook their appointment.

When your practice runs additional clinics, thenumbers of incoming telephone calls increase,as more patients telephone reception to booktheir appointments. Patient Partner has thecapability to administer appointments forseasonal/specific clinics, which reduces thepressure placed upon your reception staff whowould normally have to deal with the higherdemand for appointments from your patients.

What and who are Voice Connect?

Voice Connect has been developing telephonecall handling and processing solutions for theNHS for over 15 years. The company has beenconstantly evolving throughout this period.Initially it provided voicemail and auto-attendant,then became the UK market leader in callprocessing solutions and is now using itsexpertise to develop and deliver productsolutions to ‘real life’ problems. Over 75% ofdevelopment time and resources are now usedto ensure that current technology integrates withthird party clinical databases to ensure that GPpractices across the UK can continue to adoptPatient Partner.

For more information about VoiceConnect and Patient Partner, visitwww.voiceconnect.co.uk

Voice Connect successfully completed the NHSIGSoC (Information Governance Statement ofCompliance) process, which means we officiallyhave access to NHS digital services, including N3.For your reference, our SIN number is 311554.

Voice Connect is part of the NHS PASA (voice,video and data products framework agreementfor the NHS).

Voice Connect LtdFir Tree Lane Trading EstateGrobyLeicester LE6 0FH

t 0116 232 4640f 0116 232 2433w www.voiceconnect.co.uk