NHS Highland frees up capacity through waiting list validation app

NHS Highland says that it has avoided up to £1m of appointment costs by using a waiting list validation tool to discharge people from wait lists that no longer needed clinical time.

With waiting lists having increased exponentially during the COVID-19 pandemic and a consequential higher conversion rate of routine to urgent appointments, the health board wanted to implement a way to confirm if patients still need their appointments and to prioritise patients in order of urgency.

In November 2022, NHS Highland implemented a waiting list validation system, as part of Netcall’s Patient Hub platform, to help deliver higher response rates and increase the significant number of patients opting to be discharged from waiting lists.

As of July 2024, the trust, which is one of the largest and most sparsely populated Health Boards in the UK, has also seen an 81% response rate as an average across all outpatient departments.

Jamie Forrester, head of health records at NHS Highland said: “We now have an average discharge rate of 9%, in some areas up to 15%.

“Crucially, by keeping our waiting list tidy and validated, patients are seen in priority order where applicable.

“It helps reduce do not attends (DNAs) and short notice cancellations, allowing us to utilise clinical and administrative time better.

“Each of these metrics have a knock-on effect on the quality of care for patients across the whole system”.

On average, 9% of patients opted to discharge, or remove themselves, from the waiting list and some departments, such as ophthalmology, are achieving 15%.

Forrester added: “Once the data feeds are going in, the administration and support is minimal, and the reporting functionality enables us to measure the impact.

“Each incremental improvement makes a big difference to reducing our waiting lists, making savings, streamlining our processes and ultimately improves our service to patients”.

The Netcall waiting list validation application allows the health board to control the precise cohorts of patients it includes within each communication, meaning the trust can exclude patients from the appointment waiting lists who have more urgent conditions, such as cancer.

NHS Highland can ensure it does not contact patients who have already been treated at one of the Board’s hospitals, have already discharged themselves from the list, or have already recently been contacted.

The health board says that validating patients has reduced the administrative burden for healthcare workers, by reducing incoming calls. Patients previously had to call in to say they no longer needed their appointment, but with this no longer the case, staff can now focus on more time-sensitive tasks and allocate more time to patient care as opposed to administrative tasks.

Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust also launched a waiting list validation system from Netcall in July 2024.