Enhanced Advice & Guidance: Performance Benchmarks - Consultant Connect

Enhanced Advice & Guidance: Performance Benchmarks

Enhanced Advice & Guidance: Performance Benchmarks

Patients Covered

42 million patients covered

Consultants (1)

10,000 NHS consultants

Gps (1)

5,000 GP practices

Calls

2 million calls placed

Photos

3 million photos taken

Communicates

350,000 Messages sent

About the service:

The Consultant Connect service is the UK’s most widely used Enhanced Advice & Guidance service, connecting healthcare professionals and patients across the NHS.

Covering over half of the NHS across England, Scotland and Wales, the service enables clinicians to use a unique Dial-In Number, the secure Consultant Connect App, or their desktop computers to call specialist NHS clinicians for pre-referral advice and guidance. Clinicians can also use Consultant Connect via the app or in their browser to send photos and/or messages directly to specialist NHS clinicians for pre-referral advice and guidance. All calls are recorded for medico-legal purposes, and photos and messages are saved in a secure cloud and never stored on phones.

Since 2016, we have been publishing the definitive data of the impact of non e-RS Advice & Guidance. This includes all the cumulative data from the last 9 years for every phone call, message and photo taken*.

* 9 year review period from June 2015 to June 2024.

Download the full report

Consultant Connect 2024 Benchmark Report Download Request
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Download The 2023 Benchmarks

PerformanceTake a deep dive into the definitive data of the impact of Enhanced Advice & Guidance:

Take a deep dive into the definitive data of the impact of Enhanced Advice & Guidance:

Core Performance Data: Elective Care

‘I recently saw a three-year-old child in practice with a urine infection. However, mid-way through the consultation, they became very distressed, complaining of neck pain. I was concerned as to what could be the cause and decided to utilise the Paediatrics advice line via the Consultant Connect App. A paediatric consultant answered immediately, and agreed that this was unusual and advised the patient and their parent to attend A&E for further assessment. It was so reassuring to have specialist advice and a second opinion so quickly.’ Find out more.

GP, Greater Glasgow & Clyde

‘I used Consultant Connect to call a local respiratory consultant who was extremely helpful. He looked at her previous history and scans, and suggested a steroid and different inhaler that could be prescribed in the interim. He also advised that he would ask the secretary to expedite the patient’s appointment as she was most likely suffering from long Covid. After prescribing the steroid and inhaler, I followed up with the patient two weeks later. She was like a completely different person. Her life had changed dramatically; she was going for walks, sleeping better, and considering going back to work. Although her appointment with the Respiratory Team had been expedited, she wasn’t as concerned as before because she felt such a difference. She was so thankful for the specialist advice, which allowed her to get the care she needed fast, and I found it a truly rewarding experience.’ Find out more.

GP, Kent and Medway

‘I had a patient who was referred to Endocrinology for hyperthyroidism and was started on carbimazole in the meantime. I was periodically monitoring her thyroid function tests on the new medication, and her results consistently improved. As she had still not received an outpatient appointment from Endocrinology, I used Consultant Connect to speak with a consultant endocrinologist for advice on the medication dosage and how to reduce it.’ Find out more.

Dr Fathema Johura

GP, Oldham

Core Performance Data: Urgent Care

‘I use Consultant Connect all the time, especially at night; because we’re lone workers, it’s a valuable link to access another level of decision-making. It’s great that we can contact our emergency medicine colleagues in this way to support our decisions and access patient notes. As mobile clinicians, we don’t have access to the full platform of portals to read patient notes, so this service is vital, especially if the patient has a cognitive impairment or is a poor historian. It’s like having the specialist sat next to you, and they have access to other information you might not.’ Find out more.

Sharleen Johnston

Advanced Paramedic Practitioner, Scottish Ambulance Service

‘Recently, I visited a patient who was really unwell from the side effects of cancer treatment, but because they were immunocompromised, we didn’t want to transfer them to hospital. I used the Bypass Numbers feature on the Consultant Connect App to speak with their GP, who knew the patient’s history well, and arranged for them to conduct a home visit the same day. This meant the patient could stay at home, avoiding a likely very busy A&E department with long waiting times where they would be susceptible to infection.’ Find out more.

Shaun Martin-Brand

EMT, Welsh Ambulance Services University NHS Trust

‘I would have had to admit the patient if I hadn’t had access to the Acute Frailty line via Consultant Connect. As a result, this allowed the patient to stay home and avoid an unnecessary admission, improving her care journey.’ Find out more.

Dr Laura Godfrey

GP, Dorset

Core Performance Data: Dermatology

‘Using teledermatology as part of our 2WW pathway has been a huge success in terms of efficiency and patient experience. Our assessment suggests that in 2023/24, 39% of 2WW patients were discharged on the basis of clinical assessment of their images. This freed up a significant amount of capacity in secondary care and reduced unnecessary anxiety, worry and stress for patients who did not need to be seen on this pathway.’ Find out more.

Tom Daniels

Senior Programme Lead (Planned Care, Cancer and Healthy Adults), Leeds Health and Care Partnership

‘The biggest benefit of Consultant Connect is the access to swift dermatological advice. When seeing patients with lesions, it is not always clear which ones are benign, so Dermatology Messaging Advice & Guidance is a lifeline. Because of the hospital’s geographical location, our nearest dermatology clinic is a three-hour round-trip, and this service has prevented a huge number of unnecessary referrals, reducing elective long waits. I take the patient photos using a dermatoscope and upload them to my computer, where I can safely attach them to the Consultant Connect message in my browser.’ Find out more.

Hannah Meredith

Urgent Care Practitioner, Wales

‘Using Consultant Connect for access to rapid advice is significantly easier, especially for Dermatology. When you have queries about the severity of a patient’s condition, trying to get the best care for a patient in the past would’ve usually resulted in a referral. It would have then taken a while to receive a response to this referral, and, in the meantime, the patient would have been struggling and worrying, and there would have also been concern from my side.’ Find out more.

Dr Emamoke Ubogu

GP, Birmingham and Solihull

Core Performance Data: Mental Health

‘The service via Consultant Connect has enabled us to have a dedicated staff member to answer calls from practitioners about patients before a potential referral. We can screen in those who are appropriate for the service and offer bespoke support packages for those who aren’t. We can give general advice and guidance for those referrals and ascertain more information as needed. This is so beneficial for the patients as it puts them at the heart of the conversation as opposed to passing them onto another service. The patient receives person-centred support, tailored just for them.’ Find out more.

Jane Whalley

Perinatal and Infant Mental Health Service Manager, Hywel Dda UHB

In 2019, feedback from mental health clinicians at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (SLaM) was received that communication delays and access to specialist acute advice were creating a barrier to providing mental and physical healthcare. As a result, Telephone A&G provided by Consultant Connect was launched to aid mental health clinicians in seeking advice in the same way it is available for clinicians in Primary Care. Telephone A&G provided by Consultant Connect is now embedded into routine practice in SLaM, two years after it originally launched, with over 500 clinicians from 16 professional groups registered for the Consultant Connect App. More than 70% of A&G queries resulted in the patient receiving physical health care from mental health clinicians, avoiding referrals or transfers. Find out more.

Integrating Mental and Physical Healthcare Systems, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust

‘I recently received a call from a patient’s mum who stated that the patient was expressing suicidal thoughts, which had happened previously. Their mum was really worried, and the call came through towards the end of the day, so I needed rapid advice. I called the MHAU line via Consultant Connect and discussed the patient with the specialist, and we quickly devised a patient management plan. The specialist advised me on actions to take in the interim as well as a follow-up plan for later down the line. As a result of this call, I was able to give the patient and their mum a definitive plan which they were happy with, and the prompt response put them at ease.’ Find out more.

Dr Ejike Peterside

GP, Greater Glasgow and Clyde

Download the full report

Consultant Connect 2024 Benchmark Report Download Request
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Download The 2023 Benchmarks

Communicates

 

The gold standard: Don’t just take our word for it

The gold standard: Don’t just take our word for it

What our NHS partners say

Helen West, System Lead for Elective Recovery, Coventry and Warwickshire ICB:

‘The Consultant Connect team have always been flexible to our needs working around our systems and processes to help deliver our projects. Their team of staff are friendly and knowledgeable and always engage to provide the best service possible.

They deliver a service in the background that has assisted us to improve the delivery of our services and ultimately more timely care to our patients.’

Stephen Wells, Senior Programme Manager, North Central London ICB:

‘The support from Consultant Connect is outstanding as they fully understand the day-to-day clinical interfaces between GPs, consultants, and other clinical staff, which embraces the NHS’s thinking in developing clinical networks across organisational boundaries as an Integrated Care System and developing integrated care.

The Consultant Connect platform is so easy to use and the support from their team is highly professional, very responsive and is bespoke to the needs of the local system and is continually reviewed to ensure local clinicians are rostered to support the clinical needs of the local health and care system and making the best use of the technology.’

Olivia MosleyService Lead – Community Paediatrics, Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust:

‘The Consultant Connect team put things into place quickly and supported us every step of the way to ensure that we were happy with the process – their contact with us has been much appreciated and very efficient – we have built a strong working relationship. Not only have they been professional in their involvement, but their buy-in into how they know they support our treatment offer is impressive, considering the barriers we are all against.’

Louise Tuckett, Director of Strategy, Planning & Performance, The Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust:

‘Our work with Consultant Connect has been incredibly effective in driving more efficient patient pathways and ensuring the most effective use of our clinical resources. The operational team have always been very responsive and flexible to our needs.’

Dr Jyothi Nippani, Associate Medical Director, South Warwickshire NHS Foundation Trust:

‘The Consultant Connect system is brilliant, we wouldn’t be without it. Managing frailty is vitally important for any acute hospital, and enabling paramedics to speak with consultants quickly has changed everything.’

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If you would like to discuss how our services can support your NHS area, please give us a call on 01865 261 467, email us at hello@consultantconnect.org.uk or fill in our contact form below:

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