Mountwood Surgey
Corporate ICT helps large GP Practice to improve responsiveness and communicate more effectively with patients
Mountwood Surgery is an award-winning GP Practice which operates as part of the Hillingdon Primary Care Trust, supporting almost 10,000 patients in the area. It is also a training practice for GP Registrars, something which only certain practices are eligible to offer because they have to be of a very high standard and also have to pass rigorous inspections in order to be allowed to train new GPs.
Located within the grounds of Mount Vernon Hospital, Mountwood Surgery is run from brand new purpose-built premises which were opened in June 2007, after a five year development programme. The practice now includes seven GPs with different specialisms and three practice nurses, as well as a nurse practitioner and a healthcare assistant. It is a shining example of 21st century healthcare - but it wasn’t always that way, as Practice Manager Max Black explains:
“The practice was originally housed within the Northwood Health Centre which was owned by Hillingdon Primary Care Trust, but this was becoming overcrowded and we wanted something better for our patients. We were one of four GP Practices based there and had half the total patients, so we decided that it was time to move out and to operate from our own premises if at all possible. It took five years and £3.2m to achieve our goal, but we managed it eventually, with the new Mountwood Surgery opening in June 2007.”
The right technology partner
Of course, a vital part of any GP Practice is the ability for patients to contact the surgery easily whenever they need to, and to speak to the right person as swiftly as possible in order to make an appointment, request a repeat prescription, collect blood test results or whatever it might be that they require. So as part of the project management of the entire building, Max also had to carefully consider its communications requirements, as he continues:
“From the very start I knew that we’d have a requirement for a new phone system, and so I started to keep every piece of literature which was sent to me by communications providers! We began to think about our telephony in early 2007 so I went through the folder and found some information about Corporate ICT, along with many others. We invited five companies to tender, of which Corporate was one, and we eventually selected them as being most suitable for our needs.
We selected Corporate ICT for two main reasons. Firstly, we wanted to work with a single supplier that could provide all of the surgery’s needs - hardware, software and lines – and could then also project manage the entire implementation. I had the rest of the building to worry about so a ‘one stop shop’ was an essential requirement. I didn’t want to be coordinating multiple communications providers as well!”
Having looked at all of the proposals Max quickly identified that around 90% of what was being offered by different suppliers, and by different manufacturer’s systems, was very similar - with only around 10% of the features and functionality setting them apart from each other. From this information, he was able to quickly get a feel for the sort of facilities which could be available to Mountwood Surgery, as he outlines:
“With the tender responses in hand, I was able to draft up a list of ‘must have’ features, and then a second list of those which would be nice to have. Corporate ICT and Samsung were successful in winning the tender because they provided all of the ‘must haves’ and most of the ‘nice to haves’ – as well as Corporate being able to offer the ‘single supplier’ service which I mentioned before. In summary, they met the business requirement.”
Simple ‘one number’ communication
Mountwood Surgery finally took possession of its new building on Friday 1st June 2007, with just two weeks and three weekends to get everything in place for the official opening on Monday 18th June. Quite a tall order! But Corporate made sure that the telecoms side of the project was one thing that Max didn’t have to worry about, and everything was installed as required within the two week window.
Corporate ICT installed a Samsung OfficeServ 7200 with 50 extensions and 30 DDIs in total, as well as voicemail facilities for all staff, an auto attendant and a call management system. The solution also includes a system administration programming tool which allows Max and other staff members to make simple admin changes to the system, for example to record and set up a revised auto-attendant message for Bank Holidays and so on when opening hours are different. More recently, the system has also been developed to include a panic button on the main reception phone which enables receptionists to alert staff members within the building via other telephone handset if they need assistance in an emergency or potentially dangerous situation.
The majority of the 50 extensions are at the main site, but the solution also included four extensions at the old Northwood Health Centre, where Max had retained two consulting rooms, as he explains:
“It would have been unfair to make patients who could previously walk to us, to now make a two mile journey to the new site. So we retained the two rooms and we always have one or two GPs there in the mornings so that local patients can still benefit from the same level of service. For me though, it was essential that we have just one phone number and that patients did not have to worry about calling separate numbers depending on which site they wanted to visit. And the IP Telephony solution which Corporate recommended has enabled us to do this.”
With the Samsung solution, the IP handsets at the Northwood site are simply set up as internal extensions. A ‘reception group’ has been created, to support up to three receptionists at the main site and a fourth at the remote site, which also acts as an overflow. Receptionists now simply log in to the group and can take the next call in the queue, regardless of which site they are based at. Prior to this however, all calls are now filtered by the sophisticated auto attendant solution which Corporate also provided. Max continues:
“The auto attendant is a vital tool for us and helps us to manage calls more efficiently as they can be filtered and directed to specialist areas. For example, requests for repeat prescription or blood test results can go automatically to our clinical administrator rather than via reception. We designed this, in terms of how it works and what options callers could go through, and then Corporate set it up to those specifications, to make it do what we wanted.”
Improved patient services
It’s one thing to implement technology with the aim of improving patient satisfaction, but it’s quite another to show that its really making a difference. Max wanted to be sure that Mountwood Surgery was really improving its ability to communicate with patients, so the solution which he selected also included Call Management software which can monitor call volumes and provide a wide range of reports and statistics. But sometimes there are simpler methods of proving success, as he explains:
“The call management software provides the ability to track call volumes by day, or by hour, and gives us a much better understanding of our inbound call traffic. But we know that it can do far more, and we plan to make fuller use of it in the future - for example, to track call volumes and identify projected peaks so we can make sure we have the right level of staff available at any given time.
Having said that, since the new Samsung system was implemented, the best proof we have that it’s making a difference is that we receive far fewer complaints than we used to about our phone answering capability! Every year we carry out a patient satisfaction survey and since we moved to the new premises in 2007 we have noticed a significant reduction in issues with patients not being able to get through, or having to wait for extended periods of time before a call is answered.”
As time goes on, Max should also see wider recognition of the benefits of the new system - as in a recently implemented Government survey programme which has just been launched, one of the questions is ‘How easy is it to get through to your GP surgery on the telephone?’. A question which hopefully should now be given a positive answer by Mountwood Surgery’s patients! If this is the case, then at the simplest level Corporate ICT will have succeeded in delivering what Max originally required, as he concludes:
“Patients are happy because they are receiving a more responsive service and I’m happy because I don’t have to get involved in day to day issues relating to the phone system. If there are any problems, and of course that does happen from time to time, staff just call Corporate and the problem is fixed. If we weren’t getting a good service I’d certainly know about it, but I don’t even hear about any issues, they just get dealt with.
The technical team are very responsive and the initial installation was carried out on time and within budget, along with the rest of the building. There has been no aggravation for me at all and that’s the way I like it. I’m very happy with the decision we made when we chose Corporate and have already recommended them to other Practice Managers.”