The adoption of virtual healthcare and its “replacement” of in-person care has been met with scepticism - and rightly so.
Whilst virtual healthcare solutions were developed out of necessity during the Covid-19 pandemic, we’d be kidding ourselves if we thought this could truly replace in-person care. A truly successful healthcare model for the future which is not talked about enough, should be hybrid – both virtual, and in-person.
This is because the system simply can’t handle an entirely in-person healthcare system anymore. With waiting lists having reached a record-high of 7.5 million in May 2023, the NHS will never reach its elective recovery targets of eliminating waits of 65 weeks without first eliminating unnecessary in-person appointments.
So, if we were ready to adopt hybrid working during the pandemic - and by many, it is now seen as a competitive advantage, why can’t the same be said for the future of the healthcare industry? If healthcare is designed to reflect this lifestyle, it will enable a more focused approach to delivering quality care - when and where it’s needed.
But what tools are needed to adopt a hybrid healthcare approach?
Taking the first step towards developing a hybrid healthcare system requires us to harness proven tools like Patient Engagement Platforms (PEPs), that enable patients to take more control over the management of their healthcare, whilst eliminating Do Not Attends (DNAs) and reducing unnecessary in-person appointments.
Gone are the days of waiting for a letter to drop through the letterbox, offering a date months in advance that might not even suit. Instead, through PEPs, patients gain direct access to the appointment diary, ensuring a smoother outpatient experience and a much improved dialogue with hospital staff.
For example, University Hospitals Birmingham uses digital solutions to alert patients of new appointments, allowing them to reschedule or cancel where necessary on their phones. UHB sent 1,569,700 appointment notifications and reminders and 794,700 digital letter notifications to patients between the 1st of January and 31st of August in 2023.
This totalled to 72% of patients viewing their letter online, which not only eases the patient experience by curating everything in one digital safe space, but cuts administrative tasks. Lessening the administrative to-do lists benefits the NHS sustainability agenda and frees up time for staff to focus on delivering top tier quality patient care.
Hybrid healthcare could also look like a Patient Initiated Follow-Up tool (PIFU), empowering patients to only book when they need it rather than waiting on the clinician’s routine follow-ups. This will, again, decrease the amount of appointments that result in no-shows, giving back space and time to the waiting list and the people whose emergent cases take precedence. In fact, according to data from DrDoctor, Patient Initiated Follow-Ups could lead to at least 1.18 fewer outpatient follow-ups per patient.
With the emergence of artificial intelligence, this is fast becoming the new frontier for hybrid healthcare. AI can use collective data to predict which appointments will end in DNAs, and replace them with more urgent cases without involving any added admin.
Winter doesn’t have to be darker days.
Recent NHS plans for the winter have been announced, involving discharging patients more quickly via ‘care traffic control centres’. While an encouraging step, these logistical improvements won’t prevent unnecessary admissions from occurring to begin with.
This comes as an additional £700 million has been cut from the ‘frontline digitisation’ programme, causing inevitable delays in its objectives. Without sourcing and investing in the necessary tools, the elective backlog is only going to build.
Investing in hybrid healthcare is a smart way for the government to improve NHS services and ensure progress within the waitlists and elective backlog. Just as hybrid approaches offer a competitive edge in traditional workplaces, a similar advantage can be realised within the healthcare sector, reshaping both how we work, and the way we administer care. Tom Whicher, CEO and Founder,DrDoctor
