Background - 'not such a Fab Fact' - Did you know that each year, around 5.4m hospital appointments are missed by patients across the country, at a cost of more than £700m to the NHS?
Many of these appointments (referred to as ‘did not attends’) are missed because a patient simply forgets to attend or because something changes within their personal life. Many hospitals UK-wide still rely on communications with patients by letter and phone, while in every other walk of life online digital services play a major part in allowing everyone to take personal control and self-manage.
So what have Yeovil Hospital done? They have rolled out a new online and text-based appointments management system that gives people the option of making, cancelling and managing appointments from the comfort of their own home or on-the-go. The system runs alongside the current paper and telephone-based system, to widen the choice available to people of how to get in touch.
Less than 24-hours after the service was introduced on Monday, 7 Dec, more than 1,000 booking confirmations and 200 booking reminders have been sent through the service. Making the most of the new system is easy for patients; all they need to do is provide either their GP or Yeovil Hospital with their email address and mobile phone number which can then be used to allow online and text based services.
For more information check out their website http://www.yeovilhospital.co.uk/innovative-partnership-puts-yeovil-hospital-patients-in-control-of-their-appointments/