University Hospitals of North Midlands Inflammatory Bowel Disease Use Case: Messaging
Problem
The Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) team at University Hospitals of North Midlands NHS Trust (UHNM) was using a plethora of channels to engage and share information with their patients, including SMS, email and telephone with no formal process in place
With a growing cohort of patients, this became a disjointed and inefficient way to securely communicate personal health information to patients. Admin staff and clinicians dedicated significant time to handling approximately 700 incoming calls and voicemails each month. Meanwhile, emails and text messages lacked security and were often overlooked or misdirected to spam.
The team also wanted a digital way to send Patient Recorded Outcome Measures (PROMs) questionnaires, systemising patient inputs as well as reducing paper use and postage.
Solution
The Trust was already successfully using PKB to send appointments and letters digitally to their patients. By adopting the platform’s messaging functionality, in combination with other key features, the IBD team was able to implement more streamlined and secure clinical communication with their patients:
- Secure messaging ensuring all communication is logged in a chronological and asynchronous order in one place.
- Patients have the flexibility to message and provide information to the team at any time.
- Staff can manage their time efficiently, checking messages more quickly and allocated specific moments to review patient provided data.
- Less time is spent on inefficient phone calls.
The expectation of phone calls versus the reality of them
Implementation
Registered patients were already familiar with the platform making it an easy step to expand their usage to digital engage with their clinical team. Importantly, two-way messaging was turned on as part of a holistic approach designed to not just streamline communication but actively enable patients to self-manage and reduce demand overtime.
The logical step after turning on messaging was to utilise the PKB Questionnaires functionality, enabling the team to send out PROMs questionnaires and establish systematic digitised input from patients.- Alongside the Library was used provide resources to improve patient “self-care”. Staff could also attach individualised resources, for example a patient’s drug information added to the Library in their personal record.
- Patients can use messaging to attach additional information, such as results from other healthcare services, that can be used by the IBD team to support treatment reviews.
- Alongside clinical interaction, patients benefit from the hospital sending data to their PKB records providing a single place to reference all their health information including test results, appointments, letters and other correspondence.
- Patients can also enter their own data by tracking their symptoms, filling in a diary to help monitor their health, and adding their diagnoses and medications. This not only unifies information, but provides an important reminder for patients to update their clinical teams at their reviews.
Utilising PKB in IBD at UHNM, has identified improvements for both patients and staff. Patients initiating contact via PKB, ensures patient safety by having their patient details; including NHS number and DOB visible to the staff member responding. This has reduced the potential of “incorrect patient” contact.
The use of the library resources has improved patient “self-care”, as resources are accessible to all, but staff can attach, for example, drug information and patients can attach additional information, such as results from other health care services.
Outcomes/Impact
To date, nearly half of the IBD patient cohort are registered on PKB. As engaged patients, with a long-term condition, they find having all their health information in one place really helpful. Based on the PKB statistics, 48% of patients log in to PKB more than twice a month.
The project is already meeting the desired outcomes. In the first 6 months of using PKB, the team has recorded a 6.22% reduction in incoming and outgoing calls to the department.
Patient Feedback
In the Patient Experience Survey, over 87% of patients reported a ‘good to excellent’ experience of using the platform.
Patient: “a fast & easy way of communicating with the IBD team & all your messages and appointments are in one safe & secure place”
Patient: “Easy and efficient system to use and I especially like the notifications. It is much better than anxiously waiting for a return phone call. The IBD team has always responded very quickly to every contact made through the system”
Learnings and future developments
