STEP 1
Agree date
STEP 2
Final comms
- Create a patient leaflet: include online prescriptions and letters/reports.
- Send a text message to all the practice patients.
- Change practice voice mail message – in the voice of the most senior person.
- Include in practice welcome pack for new patients.
- Advertise: in practice newsletter, on practice website, social media, NHS Choices.
- On day one, clinician by the door and the phones.
STEP 3
Final planning
Have someone to walk the floor – to troubleshoot and support people
Check everyone knows their roles and responsibilities
STEP 4
Top tips
- Team top tips
• Signposting is critical to whole process flow.
• Duty roles – duty should be fun! Duty admin/GP/nurse are there to make the triage list work get done smoothly.
• Start each session with short huddle: who is here? Any live problems? What are we testing this session?
• Physical location of the team is important to help with supervision and efficient use of people resource – ideally use rooming: admin and clinical in one room.
• Really use skill-mix and get everyone involved working at the ‘top of their license’. (to their fullest potential?)
- Process top tips
• Minimize handoffs and over-processing.
• Agree number of callback attempts – ideally two, then send an AccuRx/email asking patient to call back if still needed.
• Agree what problems constitute clinically URGENT e.g. chest pain/new onset short of breath/suicidal repeat.
• All doctors to aim for a standard level of activity per triage session around 25-30 patient contacts (telephone/video calls; face-to-face; eConsult), pro rata for part session. This is a level of activity to aim for, it is not expected or necessarily desirable that all doctors will achieve this level immediately or consistently.
• Usually (in non-COVID times) there should be no more than three face to face appointments booked in advance on each triage doctor session – this includes booked by that doctor as well as booked by others. Any more than this and the triage system grinds to a halt.
• Try not to pre-book call-backs in advance, ask the patient to call back or submit an eConsult on the day that they need it.
- Patient top tips
• For vulnerable or discretionary patients needing a proactive call or review, book this on triage session on the appropriate date with doctor’s name clearly in slot properties.
• If you fail to contact a patient, document ‘failed encounter’ in the clinical history (not problem title) of the consultation. Attempt to contact each patient twice (or more at the discretion of the clinician e.g. if a vulnerable patient).
• If a patient has been spoken to previously about the same problem, then strongly consider if they should be seen face-to-face.
• Encourage continuity of care. Patients will make a trade-off themselves between speed of access and continuity. Inform patients when their usual doctor is in and consider giving out business cards (or AccuRx template) as a reminder.
