GP and family doctors face increasing demand for immediate and accurate patient care.

The pandemic accelerated digital and mobile innovations in healthcare, especially the rollout of telehealth and virtual visits. Patients have begun to expect clinical care without needing an in-person visit thanks to these new technologies. 

Now that patients are no longer constrained by a scheduled in-person visit, how can smaller practices – or even emergency rooms – handle the heavy influx of questions, concerns, and demands from their patients?

eConsult Health has been leading the way with a digital triage solution in the NHS to optimize the way patients are connected to provider resources.

Patients experience reduced wait times to get the clinical care they need while balancing the demands on the clinician’s time.

Digital triage uses automation technology to route and assign patients to different care settings. Patients fill out a short questionnaire in advance of any consultation. Using their proprietary, clinician-led bank of more than 10,000 questions, eConsult’s software combines patient details, case history and symptoms. Then it provides a short, concise summary to the GP where they are processed in 2-3 minutes.

The result? More than 70% of requests are closed without the need for a face-to-face appointment.

Instead of needing to go to a physical waiting room, patients can access the clinical care they need “on the go” from their mobile phone. GPs can safely and securely deal with the higher demand for answers with the assistance of eConsult’s data and automation process. 

The primary challenge in scaling this virtual patient experience was the interoperability of patient care data. For a time, it was built in house before they partnered with us at InterSystems and our IRIS for Health^TM platform.

Our expertise is in clinical triage and the patient journey, which is why our relationship with InterSystems is so important. Their extensive expertise means that we can move data between or within integrated care systems and trusts to inform commissioning decisions and, in turn, improve patient and clinical outcomes

Dr. Mark Harmon, eConsult’s Chief Strategy and Brand Officer

Now they validate patients against the NHS Spine system, which allows data to be shared securely between 23,000 healthcare IT systems across 20,500 providers. The data a user enters with eConsult to get an answer from their GP is readily accessible to other NHS providers to create a data-informed continuum of care.

eConsult is exploring ways of integrating diagnostic testing after triage with other clinical decision-support tools. As eConsult Health grows in its patient reach and healthcare ambitions, we’re proud to partner with them to continue delivering a product that scales as they scale.

Thanks to our partnership with InterSystems, the potential for data is hugely exciting, and has the potential not only to fuel research, but also improve the all-important patient outcomes as well.

Dr. Mark Harmon, eConsult’s Chief Strategy and Brand Officer

Digital triage is the start of an exciting trend in healthcare innovation toward combining artificial intelligence (AI), interoperability, and clinical care. It entirely reimagines the waiting room experience for patients. This data-informed approach to healthcare might start with interoperability, but it ultimately ends with better patient experiences.

• How are you putting patients at the center of the care experience? What challenges is your healthcare organization still facing? Let me know in the comments.
• Continue our journey together and get access to 40 years of customer service insights. Subscribe to my newsletter today.

To stay on top of all updates:

Thank you in advance for joining me on this journey. I’m excited to see where leading with service takes all of us together.

Respectfully,
John