How to rapidly improve communication about patients in your NHS area

It’s often still very difficult in the NHS to speak directly to the right person when timely advice is really needed – especially if a patient’s needs are complex or urgent. This is why we are working with more and more NHS areas to provide rapid and reliable communication by telephone, photo and messaging. It’s not just primary to secondary care communication that needs to be rapid.

We’re often asked to connect teams in multiple sites.

One service manager told us; “Geographical location is no longer a barrier between our complex teams, and I can monitor use of the service via the data reports that Consultant Connect send me. Teams like the fact calls are recorded because we can use these for training.”

One Clinical Practitioner told us: “Consultant Connect provides a quick access route for our team to consultants in the acute hospital. Clinicians can contact colleagues for advice whilst still in the patient’s home, ensuring an agreed multidisciplinary management plan is devised. For our team, this has resulted in the avoidance of hospital admission on a number of occasions.”

In one area junior hospital doctors have made over 16,500 internal calls to consultant colleagues at the same hospital for advice, supporting efficient admission and discharge decisions.

Feedback from one of these clinicians confirms that patient care is being improved; “It’s much better – discharge decisions are being made more quickly and safely.”

Consultants are using the Consultant Connect App to bring up a list of local surgeries on their mobile. All bypass numbers are pre-programmed in, so consultants simply tap the surgery they need to speak to.

Feedback from one consultant highlights the impact; “Before this service was available, I would often find myself wasting 5-10 minutes looking up the surgery number and trying to get through their switchboard. This is much better!”

Secondary care consultants are using Consultant Connect to phone or send photo messages to tertiary care services.

One consultant told us; “Being able to get through directly to tertiary services quickly by phone is particularly useful when I am managing the care of very complex or rare conditions.”

Hospitals are increasingly encouraging paramedics to use Consultant Connect to pre-alert them of possible admissions or to seek pathway advice.

We are connecting paramedics to a wide range of teams including:

• Urgent care specialties incl. COVID advice lines
• Local frailty consultants – resulting in patients being triaged to the community or frailty teams
• Multi-disciplinary teams – meaning simple interventions such as providing a lifting aid helps keep patients in their own home where possible
• To GPs for Advice & Guidance

One area told us;“83% of calls have resulted in the patient being triaged to the community or frailty teams.”

A Paramedic and Clinical Team Leader told us: “All of my contacts for patient pathways (along with receiving hospitals and specialist centres) are located in one place at the touch of a button. The connection rate to the contact is extremely fast.”

Read our recent blog article: Ambulance services using Consultant Connect to improve communication.