New technology to help hospital

Healthcare Communications helps KCHT implement a suite of purpose-built technological solutions to improve patient experience and raise staff efficiency. The new technology will help the organization with recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. It will enable the trust to improve its ‘digital by default’ patient engagement strategy while reducing any excesses caused by the epidemic.

According to Senior Improvement Lead, King’s College Hospital Charlotte English, they deal with a significant amount of Referral to Treatment (RTT) requests. Coronavirus has exacerbated that, so it’s inspiring to be investigating ways in which patients can take more ownership over their care, such as PIFU.

He added that they had not examined this before, and they await it to decrease their waiting lists. They are optimistic that it will also result in a decline in hospital admissions, which would be excellent, especially as the winter is coming, and the second wave of the epidemic is approaching.

The trust will complete Healthcare Communications’ patient portal and eClinic’s video consultation platform beside eight other solutions from the business’ patient engagement platform.

The hospital will significantly achieve the patient portal, which is designed to notify patients about their appointments’ status by automatically posting updates and digital letters to their smartphones.

Except for that, the hospital will enable Patient Initiated Follow-Ups (PIFU) and decrease inbound phone traffic.

Patients’ amount will be reduced who had to visit the hospital

With the help of eClinic, patients’ amount will be reduced who had to visit King College Hospital Trust hospitals for non-emergency situations. Besides, eClinic will be used to provide urgent care for patients who cannot attend in person.

According to Site Chief Executive for the Princess Royal University Hospital, Jonathan Lofthouse, At King’s, it has always been their plan to move to a ‘digital by default position’. So they were keen to put digital technology at the forefront of their recovery and reset programs.

Jonathan Lofthouse says he is very enthusiastic about this program of work. He added that their hospital strongly believes their richly diverse patient population deserves the best in healthcare, and to deliver this, they often need to reimagine what’s gone before. Using communication platforms will help patient self-management, improve the speed, quality, and accessibility of information, improve clinical services’ quality, and help to deliver against patients’ and clinicians’ future expectations.

Except for that, to the patient portal and eClinic platform, King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust will use a range of supplementary communication solutions from the patient engagement platform. For example, instant patient messaging, patient scheduling bot, virtual assistants,  and digital remote monitoring of patients.