Pennine Acute Trust to launch new Appointment Reminder Service for patients

Pennine Acute Trust launch Appointment Reminder Service for patients

The Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust is to launch a new appointment confirmation and reminder service for patients booked to attend any inpatient or day case procedure or for some outpatient clinics at one of its four hospitals.

Every year thousands of appointments are wasted when patients fail to attend. Missed appointments delay an individual’s treatment and increase waiting times for all other patients, costing the Trust, and the NHS in general, millions of pounds every year.

The Trust’s new Appointment Confirmation Service, which comes into force in early February, will mean free reminders will be sent out seven days before a patient’s scheduled appointment using automated telephone calls, or calls made by a call centre.

The interactive voice messages or agent calls remind patients of the date, time and hospital of their appointment and give them the option of confirming that they will attend, cancelling their appointment or re-booking it. The voice messages ask for confirmation of the patient’s date of birth, whilst staff contacting patients direct will ask them a series of questions to confirm their identity before any information is given out. The messages do not contain patient identifiable information and so are completely confidential.

Patients have the option of opting out of the service by contacting a dedicated phone number, advising staff at their appointment or by speaking to a member of the Trust’s booking and scheduling team.

The Pennine Acute Trust runs outpatient clinics and admissions for procedures at North Manchester and Fairfield General Hospitals, The Royal Oldham Hospital and Rochdale Infirmary.

The system was developed following feedback from patients. The new service will initially be rolled out to help patients for all inpatient and day case procedures and for some outpatient specialties including cardiology, gastroenterology, gynaecology and for children and young people attending a paediatric outpatient clinic.

Michelle Shiels from the Booking and Scheduling Department at The Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, said: “We are really excited about this new reminder system. It will be of huge benefit to our patients as we will also be able to advise them of urgent appointments, or on the day/short notice cancellations via the voice messaging and call centre contact methods.

“One of the aims of the new reminder system is to improve the quality of service provided to our patients and enhance the overall patient experience through less cancellations and re-scheduling of hospital appointments. We know our patients have busy lives and we want to help by reminding them of their appointments with us. We would hope patients will welcome this new service. The new system is an innovative and cost effective way of tackling missed appointments across our hospitals which we hope will also reduce the amount of money that missed appointments cost us.”