The Primary care sector, as all other sectors in the health system, is challenged by the increase in demand that cannot be met by the supply. This is driven by demographic changes, government policies and reduced resource available. Our mPoint (Medical Appointment) booking system is trying to meet those challenges through the optimisation of resource allocation and to a lesser degree reduce and redirect demand for a single service.
The focus of mPoint is to deliver a more patient centric approach combined with clear benefits to suppliers into the Primary care market. The current appointment process for a GP practise for patients and and practises are summarised here.
Patients
- Appointments (including changes and cancellations) can only be made during Practise opening hours via phone or walk-in
- All appointments require assistance from practise administration staff in real-time
- No visibility of available times; available times need to be narrow down and agreed whilst interacting with practise staff
- Appointment queries are only with one provider at the time, i.e. no information on availability of preferred time for same service within a geographical location
Practise
- Administration staff over-burdened with appointment request at peak times; staffing level not sufficient to deal with fluctuation, i.e. 51% of all phone call are related to appointments; real time ad-hoc engagement required to be provided by staff (phone call and/or walk-ins)
- Staff interrupted from other tasks or dealing with patients at reception
- No active DNAs (do not attends) management
- Manual handling for ad-hoc changes in capacity, i.e. reduced staff / cancellations
Our Approach
- Offer an established consumer-based, patients centric solution for patients to book a GP appointment from anywhere any time via Web/App online services
- Move the appointment scheduling process entirely to patients
- Give patients real-time access to available appointments
- Optimise appointments to utilise capacity provided by healthcare professionals (GP’s & Nurse)
- Reducing cost for GP practices through reduction of administration staff to handle appointments and national productivity losses to economy (appointments must made during working hours)
- Minimise missed appointments (DNAs)
- Predict demand based on historial and local data patterns
Main benefit Patients
- 24/7 Booking and changing of GP appointments
- Access to real-time availability with instant confirmation
- Suggested alternative based on preferences and (current) location
- Active reminder / integration with calendar apps
Benefits to GP Practises
- Reduce number of appointment related phone calls by up to 80%
- Minimise missed appointments (DNAs)
- Better patient engagement – Open 24/7 for scheduling appointments
- Improve resource utilisation
- Automated workflow, error reduction and free up administration staff
- Fully hosted, compatible will all Patient Administration Systems (PAS) / Practice Management Software (e.g. Socrates, Health one and HPM etc.)