This is part of our blog series: “what we learned from implementing a ‘total triage’ system”.
PCS|Practices have started to go live with total triage. We aren’t the first in the City and we definitely aren’t the experts, but we know a few practices are waiting to hear how we are doing. Based upon this we are going to include a regular blog, which is neutral on system and process but may help others from our learning along the way. If any practices who are already live wish to share their learning too, that would be amazing please email pcs.enquiries@nhs.net.
READ BLOG 1 – What to think about when deciding upon your model
READ BLOG 2 – timelines/project plans for go live
Total Triage Blog: What we’ve learned since launching the system.
- Patients choosing to make requests online has increased slightly to nearer 60% (we have a large non-English speaking population with most of our practices with high deprivation levels. It is much higher in our less deprived practices, so unfortunately there is still and inequitable impact on some practices in terms of the workload associated with phone calls. However, you can see from the image below it is more consistent than activity is
- We are switching our patient engagement to focus on continuity of care, to understand if triage is having a positive or negative impact on this area for patients.
- Below shows some of our site’s percentage of appointments made within 2 or 14 days. All our patients go from triage to appointment (where one is indicated), but our wait times have significantly improved with triage. We will continue to monitor this, and work with other practices in the City to understand why there has been such a dramatic improvement.
