We love working with NHS partners to find solutions to complex digital issues. Together with Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust (CHFT) and The Health Informatics Service (THIS), we developed and delivered a “Cancelled Appointments Solution”. This was a customisation to their Cerner Millennium (now Oracle) EPR solution that allowed clinicians in real-time to reprioritise appointments live in the EPR.

Pre-covid, the Trust had 10,000 overdue follow-up appointment requests. This backlog more than doubled during the pandemic and despite CHFT’s best efforts continued to increase.

Before the project started, CHFT’s follow-up waiting list peaked at 27,000. However, within weeks of using the new validation approach, they reduced this to 23,452. Not only a significant reduction but the first since Covid.

Currently, 9,767 unnecessary appointment requests have been removed which is a potential saving of £1.5m.

The process has been developed by using the Trust’s knowledge portal system (Qlik Sense), known as KP+, which links to CHFT’s data warehouse, and this has helped to identify three patient cohorts at the root of the backlog for the following reasons:

• The patient is on the waiting list for an appointment and has a duplicate appointment booked.
• The patient is on the waiting list for an appointment and has since had an appointment.
• The patient is on the waiting list multiple times in the same speciality.

What are the benefits of this type of solution?

This initiative not only had significant financial benefits but also positively impacted staff and patient wellbeing. Although initially not intended as a solution to address wellbeing, the validation team experienced increased satisfaction as they could effectively address data quality issues contributing to the backlog, thus making a tangible difference to the trust’s performance and patient care. By reducing unnecessary appointments, vital slots could be freed up for patients in urgent need, thereby reducing waiting times and facilitating clinic scheduling. This improved time management for both booking staff and clinicians, alleviating stress and allowing them to focus more on patient care.