X-on Health acquires Hanley Consulting to help end 8am GP rush

GP digital telephony provider X-on Health has acquired Hanley Consulting to strengthen its technology, data analytics and expert services for GP surgeries across the UK and help to end the 8am rush.

X-on Health’s Surgery Connect platform is used by more than half of all surgeries in England, with each practice receiving on average over 330 calls per working day, and 23% received before 9am.

The Hanley Consulting team specialises in improving patient access to surgeries by streamlining and optimising processes with the aim of enabling surgeries to make better use of the tools available to them to manage demand.

Julian Coe, managing director at X-on Health, said: “We are delighted to have Hanley Consulting joining the X-on team.

“Everyone across the whole of the country wants to see an end to the 8am rush for GP appointments and by adding the intellectual property that Hanley have developed, we offer a very powerful solution.

“By deploying the Surgery Assist virtual assistant in conjunction with our Surgery Connect platform, we have a winning formula.

“We know that demand on staff time and a lack of resources often means that practices don’t fully utilise the technology that they have adopted.

“With our access optimisation service, we are confident we can ease the burden for practice managers and make a real difference without major investment or extra work for practice teams.”

Independent research found that Hanley’s EDATT virtual support assistant for patients helped reduce the number of inbound telephone calls and increase NHS App utilisation. This eases the burden on busy reception teams, enabling them to better cope with demand.

Comparison surveys carried out in June 2023 and June 2024 found that Tudor Lodge Health Centre in London, which was an early adopter of EDATT, experienced 54% fewer calls in the 8am rush after deploying the solution.

The latest version of EDATT was launched at Best Practice Birmingham in October 2024 and will be rebranded Surgery Assist.

Sharon Hanley, managing director at Hanley Consulting, said: “The X-on team and their Surgery Connect product have long been the stand-out telephony providers in the market that we have preferred to work with and have recommended to our customers.

“From the outset, they have understood that it is the need to marry technology, people, and processes into a simple offering that will enable GPs to better manage their capacity and provide better access to patients.

“More than 80% of people still prefer to contact their surgery by phone and therefore it was obvious to us that working with the leading telephony provider was the optimal means of improving access.

“With the rapid rate of technological advance, X-on’s expertise in voice will enable us to introduce more and better routes for patients to access the care they need and make the 8am rush a thing of the past.”

Meanwhile in Aril 2024, NHS England announced that upgraded phone technology had been rolled out at GP practices across England as part of the GP access recovery plan.