The Patient Pass online solution was collaboratively designed by developers at Extravision and clinical staff at Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust (SRFT).
It was designed to overcome flaws in the current referral process with the key goals to speed up referrals to specialist departments, support clinical process reliability, and build in information governance.
Before Patient Pass, a hospital referred patients by making a phone call to the specialist department.
Now:
- The hospital logs on and creates the referral
- The solution prompts them to answer relevant questions about the patient
- It provides consistent, clinical advice on how to care for the patient
- It keeps a record of the information provided by both sides
- The specialist unit can view all cases and prioritise urgent ones
Patient Pass is easy to use, with a clean interface and so has been adopted quickly.
It has undergone a full regional rollout in the north sector of Greater Manchester (referral catchment population 1.5 million). All six referring sites have adopted the system and embedded its use into practice.
The user base developed through positive word of mouth and over 75% of all new referrals are now generated using Patient Pass. This provides a robust documentation trail visible to all sites.
Improved control over clinical workflow has allowed the renal service to reallocate staff roles. As a result, 0.5WTE of StR time has been released to support training and direct clinical care.
Reduced call volume
Approximately 20 calls a day have been removed. This has given staff greater control over their workflows and improved access for urgent calls.
The solution has had an impact in these key areas:
1. Communication
Staff waiting to have a patient referred can get status updates and can ask questions via the communication tool. This has improved access to specialist renal advice for referring sites.
2. Efficiency and satisfaction
Because the specialist team is now more efficient (due to reduced call volume) this has boosted local care delivery and led to greater staff
satisfaction.3. Safety
For every referral an identical set of questions must be answered, and, in response, the solution provides consistent advice designed by senior clinicians. Lives can be saved as nothing is missed.
In the event of a medical mistake or dispute, Patient Pass provides a transparent record of all interactions which is auditable and ensures KPIs are monitored and reportable.
4. Staff efficiency
Staff in specialist departments no longer spend their days answering phone calls and can now start and finish tasks much more efficiently.
5. Analysis
Patient Pass has a reporting suite so SRFT can analyse the metrics relating to all referrals. This provides real operational knowledge to support vital forward planning around referral locations and referral types.
Feedback from all teams has been positive and referring sites are delighted they can make referrals in under three minutes and see the expected time to transfer to a renal bed.
Renal teams were engaged throughout the development process to ensure the system offered workflow benefits and provided appropriate information to allow safe clinical assessment.
Renal staff are highly satisfied with the reduced call volume, the ability to choose when to respond to messages, and the decision support tools providing core clinical responses.
Over 900 referrals have been made through the system since implementation. The increased control over when referrals are answered has saved 0.5WTE StR time.
