Moving local hotline arrangements such as ‘on-call’ or ‘hot-week’ consultant lines to Consultant Connect brings everything in one place, centralising the whole Advice & Guidance process, delivering efficiencies, and benefiting all parties involved.
This is exactly what happened to the ‘Integrated Elderly Care Silver Phone’ in Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust (BHT).
The ‘Silver Phone’ was used by GPs, Paramedics, hospital clinicians, community, and care home nurses when they needed to speak to a Consultant Geriatrician at BHT about referring patients to Multidisciplinary Day Assessment Service (MUDAS) and Community Assessment and Treatment Service (CATS).
From ‘Silver Phone’ to ‘Frailty line’ via Consultant Connect
Consultant Connect was already available to clinicians in the area, so a Frailty line, manned by the Geriatric team at BHT, was added to the list of specialties available. Initially, the ‘Frailty line’ ran alongside the ‘Silver Phone’, meaning that clinicians were able to access the Geriatric team at BHT in two ways. However, given the ‘Silver Phone’ was well established within the area, many calls to the Geriatric team at BHT were still being made via the ‘Silver Phone’ rather than Consultant Connect.
In August 2021, BHT decided to discontinue the ‘Silver Phone’, adding a voice message asking the clinicians calling for advice to use their Consultant Connect App or Dial-In Number to speak to the Geriatric team.
One of the benefits of using Consultant Connect for Advice & Guidance is the rich data reporting available via the service. All calls are recorded for medico-legal purposes, and the data reporting available enables specialty managers, clinicians and commissioners to have clear visibility of volumes of calls, where they are coming from and their outcomes. As mentioned in the NHS Long Term Plan, having access to timely and accurate data can maximise opportunities to improve care for all patients.
Frailty line performance to date
- >4300 calls placed to date
- 17 second average connection time
- 76% of calls answered first time
Where outcomes were reported:
- 36% of calls resulted in the patient being treated out of hospital
- 58% of patients navigated to outpatients (e.g. MUDAS or CATS)
- 6% of patients admitted
*Data correct as of May 2024
If you have any questions or would like more information, call us on 01865 261467 or email hello@consultantconnect.org.uk.
