SystmConnect Implementation at Leacroft Medical Practice
Leacroft Medical Practice manage a practice population of 14,000 patients. The practice recently deployed SystmConnect, TPP’s online consultation and triage solution, to provide a faster, more efficient, and more accessible service to their patients. Their aims were to ensure that patients receive a response to requests on the same day and maintain round-the-clock availability for request submissions.
The practice had previously introduced a ‘total triage’ model for handling all patient requests. This meant that requests, whether submitted online, made in person, or over the phone, would all be triaged and prioritised in a standardised way. Prior to moving to SystmConnect, they were using three different systems to manage this: SystmOne as their EMR, Footfall for online consultations, and AccuRx for messaging. Using multiple systems resulted in inefficiencies that impacted on the number of requests that they could manage.
Staff at Leacroft Medical Practice found that the move to a single, joined-up platform meant that they could process requests more efficiently. Matthew Cullis, practice manager, said “As a SystmOne practice, it made a lot of sense to have our total triage solution be part of SystmOne. We wanted everything to be integrated with the patient record without needing to jump between systems, copy and paste, or rely on integration with another supplier directly or through a third party, as was the case previously.”
Matthew said “We struggled to manage the very high levels of demand in winter, so we had to come up with a solution that would improve efficiency enough to allow us to plan for and meet all patient demand.” The deployment of SystmConnect has now allowed the practice to support the submission of requests at any time, as the efficiencies of the solution mean there is no longer a need to limit the timeframe during which requests can be made.
In the first two weeks after switching to SystmConnect the practice saw an immediate improvement in their performance. An outcome is reached for 55% of patient contacts within two hours or less, and for 95% of requests an outcome is reached within 15 hours. Each decision and outcome is reached up to a minute quicker than when using their previous systems, which saves the practice up to four hours a day.
The solution has also allowed the practice to customise the service to better meet the needs of their practice’s population. The SystmConnect platform provides out-of-the box content, but services can also choose to publish additional request types with locally tailored patient-facing questionnaires. Matthew emphasised the value of this flexibility over other solutions, as changes can be made without the need to raise support tickets or wait for development requests to be actioned. Matthew suggests that to get the best outcomes, practices adopting SystmConnect should take advantage of the configurability of the platform, and determine whether any changes or additions should be made to benefit the team and their patients. At Leacroft, this approach has allowed the entire practice team to feel confident that they can support a wide variety of incoming requests and process them effectively. Matthew added “There has been only positive feedback from patients and staff. It’s been great for morale.”
If you are interested in deploying SystmConnect, please visit https://tpp-uk.com/systmconnect/ for more information.