Around 11,000 people a month contact Kent Community NHS Foundation Trust and a project is under way to improve their experience.
The Patient Experience Improvement Plan is set to revamp the way patients, GPs and the wider community interact with us by phone and email.
Leading the project is Charlotte Herbert, Urgent Care Operations Manager, who said: “This is all about ensuring we are meeting the expectations of the community we serve and offering a consistent quality experience to anyone who contacts us.”
This will be achieved through looking at service levels, getting feedback from callers, investigating new technologies and engaging with patients to get their ideas about how to make things better.
Ambitious plans to improve quality
Charlotte said: “We are looking at how we can improve
services levels and want to aim for 80% of calls to be answered within five
seconds. We’d like less than 5% of calls to be abandoned too. To achieve this
might involve reviewing how we roster team members or introducing split shifts,
for example.
“Our aim is to set up quality evaluations where we review two to three calls or
emails each month which we then score and feed back to the team. This will
allow us to see how we are improving month on month.”
The team has already started listening to call recordings to identify some of the common themes people call about and areas for improvement.
Involving patients and other stakeholders, such as CCGs and GPs, in the process is an important partt of the plan.
“I want us to have regular patient surveys to get feedback about their experience with our service and also hold engagement groups to get their ideas about how we can better meet their needs,” Charlotte said.
Team- led improvements
Callers get in touch for a variety of reasons, for example to speak with a district nurse, to chase an appointment, GPs referrals and end of life calls.
The team has patient experience champions who meet monthly to review contacts and come up with ideas about how to make a difference.
Charlotte said: “An important part of the plan is developing an improvement mindset within our team. As the people dealing directly with contacts every day, they’re the ones who’ll have the best ideas about how we can make improvements.”
Aiming high
Charlotte also wants to look at the role of technology, and whether the trust can take a fresh look at the way we communicate with people.
“People like to communicate in different ways. We might be able to give them more choice in how they interact with the trust rather than just over the phone or by email, for example using online booking systems for appointments, or online chat.”
The team has an ambitious plan to improve quality and is aiming high – wanting to be externally recognised for best practice in contact centre efficiency and quality.
Charlotte said: “Ultimately, this is about achieving consistent quality when any patient contacts us. We want to ensure that we are meeting their expectations, that they don’t need to chase anything, and we’re getting positive feedback from them. “It’s my hope we’ll be able to implement new practices that can be rolled out across the whole of the trust.”