A waiting list validation service which has been rolled out across all outpatient clinics in NHS Highland has seen an 81% response rate from patients and avoided £1m worth of costs.
Waiting list validation is a crucial part of effective waiting list management. Waiting lists are vetted to ensure that only patients who require to be seen are waiting. By removing those that do not require to be seen, those that do will be seen quicker and unnecessary appointments will be avoided.
NHS Highland started using Netcall Patient Hub in 2022 to tackle this task. After a successful pilot with Dermatology it was soon rolled out across other areas and became fully operational in 2023-24.
It involves contacting patients directly via email or text asking a pre-defined set of questions around their current waiting list status. This can include:
- Do you still wish to be seen?
- Do you no longer wish or require to be seen?
- Are there any periods where you are unavailable to be seen?
The patient then responds via a patient portal and this is fed directly back to the hub support team operated from within our Patient Booking Service.
Since going live over 5000 patients have asked to be removed, or discharged as no longer requiring treatment.
Jamie Forrester, Head of Health Records for NHS Highland, said: “Vetting our waiting lists has created more accurate, and shorter, lists. Validating our lists ensures patients are seen in priority order and it also helps reduce our ‘did not attend’ (DNAs) and our short notice cancellations.
“No patient is removed from the list without checking in with their clinician and, for those who would rather not be contacted in this way, our standard communication methods remain in place. The response rate from our patients has been excellent with 81% engaging with the system and, with the number of patients no longer requiring to be seen, we’ve avoided the wastage of the equivalent of approximately £1m worth of costs and been able to redirect this resource into seeing patients that require access to specialist services.”
On average, specialties have seen a discharge rate of 9% with some areas, such as Ophthalmology, achieving 15%.
Jamie added: “Individuals may want removed from the waiting list if they have already had treatment elsewhere, their condition has cleared up or they been seen and treated via a different pathway.”
“As well as clearing up some space on our waiting lists it has also freed up clinical and administrative time which also has that knock-on effect in the quality of care provided for our patients.”