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Rheumatology Advice Line (not new but invaluable!)
Though we have had an advice line in place for many years it has been proved invaluable at this time. When covid-19 hit back in March we were understandbly inundated with calls from our patients & then at various other time points we had had further influxes of calls, particularly when shielding criteria were released.
We made two significant changes, one was to record an updated answer phone message every week with general advice. Our initial message explained that all appointments had moved to telephone and provided some advice about our patients and their risk from covid-19, when shielding criteria were released we updated the message to highlight to patients that they would receive a letter by the end of the week if they met the criteria. Secondly we drafted all the team (specialist nurses, consultants, physio, OTs) to assist in responding to calls, we drew up a crib sheet regarding the commonly asked queries and colleagues would answer those queries they felt able to.
What is needed to sustain the change?
We recognise the importance of ensuring the workload of the advice line is appropriately job planned and we will be reviewing this regularly going forward.
We also realise that the advice line picked up a lot of queries that we could have dealt with far more efficiently. For example a text alert to all of our patients could have let everyone know that follow-up appointments had all move to telephone appointments, we could have sent out alerts about shielding and when people would hear and pushed out links to our website for more info as it was updated.
We have been trying to set up text reminders for some time but our IT systems do not have this functionality. We hope that with what's happened over the last few months this will provide more support to having systems in place to send out important alerts to our patients.
What is your region?
North West
In Leeds we changed our rheumatology advice line service from answerphone only to 'live pick up' during office hours.
Nearly 4000 advice line calls have been answered by the CNS team since 23 March 2020 (start of UK lockdown).
Patient feedback for the live service has been overwhelmingly positive. Patients really value the opportunity to receive support and clinical advice from a registered health professional.
We are looking at job plans to explore whether this change can be sustained in the longer term.
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Status labels added: Collaboration, Supported Self-Management, Telephone Advice, Telephone Consulting, Triage, Virtual MDT, Horizon 1
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Status labels added: Integration Of Resources, Pathway Redesign, Patient Activation, Shared Decision Making, Staff & Patient Collaboration, Upskilling Of Staff
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Status labels removed: Collaboration, Integration Of Resources, Pathway Redesign, Patient Activation, Shared Decision Making, Staff & Patient Collaboration, Supported Self-Management, Telephone Advice, Telephone Consulting, Triage, Upskilling Of Staff, Virtual MDT
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