A new system for sending patient letters is cutting hundreds of pounds in postage each quarter — and freeing up colleague time for patient care.
Using Gov.Notify, letters are sent directly to patients by post, but without colleagues at Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust having to manually print, fold, stuff envelopes or frank them. A bot also handles the upload process automatically: colleagues just save documents to a shared drive. Teams are saving roughly a minute of handling time per letter, alongside reductions in postage, paper, ink and envelope costs. In one quarter, the diabetes team and epilepsy teams saved more than £485.
Adult Long Term and Specialist Services Admin Manager Sophie Lees said: “The team realised they were spending time folding letters when they could be doing something more urgent or more meaningful for patients.
“The teams have been really excited — they can see the connections between digital innovation, automation, cost savings and sustainability. They’re proud of this work. Recently, a team using Notify had to spend time with a service that wasn’t, and they were distraught — hundreds of letters to get through! It can be a tedious task, sitting waiting for the printer.”
Sophie added: “This bot works alongside other patient letter bots already running for us. One staff member said that knowing the bots are working in the background takes the pressure off them each day.”
The project began in October, when Sophie was looking for a solution for teams without access to franking machines. Preparation involved removing questionnaires and leaflets from letters, with resources instead shared by email, website link or QR code. Fewer than one per cent of patients subsequently called to request a paper copy.
“We owe a big thank you to our IT colleagues who suggested trying Notify,” Sophie said.
Next, the team plans to trial NHS Notify, which links directly to the NHS app. Patients will receive a notification when a digital letter is waiting for them; if it isn’t opened within 24 hours, the letter is automatically sent by post instead.
Find out more in the project on a page:
