Portsmouth Hospitals expands digital patient communications

Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust has expanded digital patient communications through a redesign of its patient engagement portal and solutions from Healthcare Communications.

Since September 2023, the digital patient communications programme team has revamped the trust’s patient portal, rolled out waiting list validation and implemented digital letters across outpatient services which were previously managed in paper form by staff.

The programme has helped to standardise clinic information, streamline workflows for staff by replacing manual and time-consuming processes, such as printing and postage.

There are more than 16,000 patients registered for the patient portal, with around 9,800 appointments added to digital calendars each month as reminder prompts.

Since the redesign, an average of 40,000 digital letters have been processed monthly, saving approximately 56,000 sheets of paper and £10,200 in postage costs.

Roughly 1,400 digital appointment amendment requests are now received every month, improving patient experience by removing the need to wait in hospital call queues.

More than 53,000 waiting list validation survey responses have been returned and counting, with 11,000 reported within the first 12 hours of the latest cohort launch.

Dr Chris Watts, consultant anaesthetist and programme clinical safety lead at Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust, said: “We are very proud of the ground we’ve covered so far on our digital patient engagement journey at Portsmouth.

“A huge amount has been achieved in a relatively short space of time and I think our collaborative approach has played a vital role.

“Representatives from across the trust including clinical, IT and admin, along with the Healthcare Communications team came together to fulfil our new digital strategy.

“We meet regularly to ensure we keep a good pace and work through issues quickly.  The whole team is excited to be focusing on our next priorities to implement patient-initiated follow-up (PIFU) and redesign our SMS appointment reminders to further improve on our patient engagement”.

General patient feedback has been positive, particularly on the portal’s convenience and accessibility functionality, including the option to translate letter content into 100 languages and have content read out loud in 42 languages.

Patients have also commended that they no longer need family member assistance because their letter can read it aloud and text can be enlarged, as well as the ease of accessing the letter at any time anywhere, eliminating the risk of misplaced paper letters.

Kenny Bloxham, managing director at Healthcare Communications, said: “Portsmouth has done brilliantly with its digital communications implementation in only a few months.

“Their engagement rates are some of the highest we have seen among our 140+ NHS partners. It’s an excellent example of the difference digital-led communications can make to boost patient satisfaction levels, optimise productivity and release financial savings.

“We’re looking forward to supporting the trust to elevate its implementation further”.

Healthcare Communications and Deep Medical announced in August 2024 that they have integrated an AI solution into a communications platform at Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust, with the aim of reducing missed appointments and improving waiting times.