We are engagement experts in health and social care
Over the years we have helped many teams to innovate and improve
Here is a small sample of our work…
What was the challenge?
The Head of Patient Experience at Bradford District Care NHS Foundation Trust had consulted on patient experience and involvement, forming a new strategy: Your Voice Matters.
At the centre of this is better use of digital technologies and social media to engage in creative ways with service users and the public.
How did we help?
We implemented Patient Connect, rebranded in keeping with the Your Voice Matters brand, providing new channels for engagement.
Our Patient feedback solution enables the Trust to go beyond FFT and capture the experience of service users with LD communication needs using best practice methods
What was the challenge?
Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust provides hospital-based services from three main sites – the Alexandra Hospital in Redditch, Kidderminster Hospital and Treatment Centre, and Worcestershire Royal Hospital in Worcester.
With a wide range of services to provide to a population of 580,000 people in Worcestershire and surrounding counties, the Trust employs some 6,000 people spread across a wide geographical area.
The Trust was looking for better ways to reach out to staff and ensure all its people had the tools they needed to do the job, wherever they worked.
How did we help?
We implemented the 4Ward Staff app, message hub and portal.
4ward is a long-term, far-reaching initiative run by the Trust which aims to help colleagues work more effectively together in a spirit of mutual support and respect.
Our solution helps turn the initiative from a passive to an active resource.
Moving 4ward together, we aim to transform culture whilst at the same time improving performance.
What was the challenge?
To create new channels for staff communication across acute and community sites
How did we help?
Staff Connect was implemented for Whittington Health. Two upgrades were added for this project: new features for ESR integration; and the addition of a new events management module.
What was our approach?
We have a carefully managed approach to implementation that starts and ends with us listening to our clients.
Many of the people we work with may never have been involved in an IT implementation before so we are always careful to use simple language and move at a pace that our clients feel comfortable with.
We know how important stakeholder relationships are, so we are careful to ensure we have a clear scope and we stick to the brief.
What was the challenge?
We had long worked with Birmingham Women’s Hospital when it merged with Birmingham Children’s Hospital.
Relying on in-house systems for patient feedback and with few vehicles for patient engagement, the Trust turned to us for help with digital solutions.
How did we help?
We have extended our service from BWH to the Children’s Hospital and the MH partnership.
We now offer a digital engagement solution for all children seeking mental health support Birmingham-wide, as well as children at BCH and women at BWH. On our systems, patients, relatives and carers can
– Find patient information, relevant to their care pathway
– See service updates
– Leave feedback
– Sign up for news, messages and patient pathway alerts from the Trust
What was the challenge?
In 2018, a new management team sought better ways to capture patient voice and cascade the insights to staff so as to create a culture of engagement.
How did we help?
We proposed an integrated feedback and staff engagement solution that uses new technologies for secure communication.
Implementing both Patient Connect and Staff Connnect, the suite was launched to all staff by the Chief Executive in September 2018.
Our patient feedback solutions was implemented on all wards and the HR and Comms teams were supported to cascade messages to staff using the new staff app & internal messaging system.
What were the outcomes?
By the middle of the following year, Princess Alexandra Hospital was ranking top for patient satisfaction among its benchmark group of hospitals.
What was the challenge?
To improve patient safety, the Medical Leadership wanted to give the 2019 intakes of junior doctors a summary of all the learning from previous cohorts, securely on their own devices.
How did we help?
Staff Connect was implemented for Tallaght Hospital. Two upgrades were added for this project: enhanced LDAP integration; and improvements to our Quality Matters feature, enabling unlimited content to be added in unlimited sections, dynamically targeted at users, team by team. We added 70+ pages of clinical guidance to the system, and designed launch materials for distribution to new junior doctors on their first day.
What were the outcomes?
All Junior Doctors swiftly reported that the toolkit has become an essential tool in daily use. In 2020, our project was submitted for a national HR innovation award, and shortlisted alongside global brands.
What was the challenge?
Back in 2014, the Nursing leadership at Birmingham Women’s Hospital were faced with growing regulatory demands for patient insight, and frustrated with their incumbent provider of patient feedback solutions. We were asked to implement a robust system for collating and reporting on patient feedback that integrates seamlessly with a fully customised smartphone app.
How did we help?
We implemented Patient Connect for BWH, an integrated feedback and engagement solution offering users the ability to give feedback on the go. The smartphone platform provides maps and directions, triggers welcome messages when patients arrive on site, and invites feedback when they leave. Behind the scenes, our patient feedback solution collates data a from smartphone, kiosk, online, paper and SMS, using smart demographic profiling to target patients with right surveys at the right time.
What were the outcomes?
In the firs year or so, over 7000 apps were installed by patients and visitors who completed some 60,000 sessions.
Some 20,000 feedback responses are processed monthly, representing the voice of over 12,000 patients a year. Realtime analytics, save the patient experience time and effort, providing quick insight on the strengths and weaknesses. With the benefit of this insight, satisfaction is now consistently in the 96-99% range.
The project was highly commended by the judges of the national Patient Experience Awards in 2015. Since then, the products have been fully redesigned in keeping with the Trust’s changing corporate identity.
What was the challenge?
Located at an out of town site in north London, patients at North Mids, needed information on bus, train and tube routes, ward and clinic locations and patient facilities.
How did we help?
Working with the Comms and patient engagement teams, we developed a comprehensive, interactive map of locations and facilities, making this available to patients on their smartphones.
What were the outcomes?
The platform soon became a useful tool for patient engagement, showing bus stops, walking routes to stations, live departure boards and offering notifications based on geo-location.
What was the challenge?
To make patient experience an integral part of care delivery. Driving such improvements in care needs an efficient, end-to-end process of collating data, analysing data and delivering actionable insight
How did we help?
Working alongside UHL we implemented a survey methodology delivering high quality benchmarking data and operational insight. We then utilised a variety of data capture methods using Patient Connect to gather immense amounts of invaluable data. Finally, to close the feedback loop, we developed and employed an analytics functionality within Patient Connect. Through tailored reports that combine, visualise and transform data from across surveys, UHL could get from survey to insight at the touch of a button.
What were the outcomes?
Through implementing an electronic patient feedback system, simplifying complex organisational hierarchies within the system for patients and ensuring that the right survey was presented to the right patient, over 3000 patients were surveyed and well over 4000 different responses gathered. This immense amount of data could be unpicked through powerful analytical tools and through visualising and sharing survey results in real time. Through patient feedback, patient experience was made an integral part of care delivery.
What was the challenge?
Back in 2014, we were already providing Patient Connect to The Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust when the team there asked us to develop a new tool for staff engagement: a large workforce spread over a wide site, many who seldom log onto a work PC.
How did we help?
Delivered to spec, on time and on budget, we created v1 of our secure ‘Bring Your Own Device’ Staff Connect app. This includes Staff Directory, New Starter Orientation, Quality and Performance, and Job Vacancies. Later updates added secure in-app messaging, staff insight and more.
What were the outcomes?
In development, feedback from staff was excellent, with particularly positive response from new starters. After launch at an all-manager event, some 20% of staff had soon downloaded the new app.
Our innovation was recognised at the national Patient Experience Awards in 2015. Since that time, the products have been fully redesigned in keeping with the Trust’s changing corporate identity.
What was the challenge?
Engaged patients are better patients. That is, they are more aware of services and treatments which can lead to better outcomes through informed choice. Our challenge was to enable the team at Tallaght Hospital to connect with patients and the public in a non-clinical setting to improve the experience of care.
How did we help?
We created the Tallaght Hospital app and portal, with integrated feedback solution for patients. Designed to promote promote health literacy, support, self-care and provide a platform for public health campaigns, information can be dispatched to patients, pathway by pathway via email, SMS or in-app notifications.
What were the outcomes?
The app was downloaded by over 1300 people in the first 3 months, with some 8000 sessions were logged. as patients and carers returned to the app time and time again for advice and information. Analysis of patient feedback was made quick and dynamic: the team can now build unlimited analytics dashboards, analyse their results and disseminate automated reports to all staff at the touch of the button.
What was the challenge?
In 2017, the Chair of a newly formed GP federation approached us seeking ways to harmonise patient information between between some 20 GP practices.
How did we help?
We worked with the clinical staff at the Federation to create workflows of information, pathway by pathway for each of the clinical conditions in the Quality Outcomes Framework (QOF).
After launch, patients were encouraged to sign up to a fully designed and branded patient portal as they passed through the practices, stating their condition and contact preferences.
What were the outcomes?
For each participating practice, some 60-90 patients signed up each day. Upon sign up, patients were asked to opt in to receiving notifications about their healthcare. In an evaluation, the vast majority of participating patients said they considered patient information an essential element of healthcare delivery.
The Patient Information Forum invited us to present this case study at their national event on promoting best practice in 2018.
