Posted: 26 February 2021

Partial bookings to improve access to healthcare

As part of a programme to improve outpatient services to provide a better experience for patients and to make the best use of NHS time and resources, the Trust is updating the way patient appointments are booked for outpatient clinics.

The new partial booking system notifies patients of their appointment no more than six weeks in advance. The shorter time between booking and appointment not only means the service is less likely to have to cancel appointments due to changes in staff or clinic availability, but patients are also more likely to keep their appointment.

The Trust’s Pain Management service began using the partial booking system in August 2020. Since then the average number of disruptions to appointments, for example due to colleague absence or annual leave, has reduced by 30%.

With appointments no longer booked so far in advance, patients are also more likely to know whether the booking suits them and, with additional reminders such as text messages, they are also more likely to remember to attend their appointment. Furthermore, fewer cancellations initiated by the service also means fewer patient cancellations because the rebooked appointment does not suit them. As a result the Pain Management Service has seen a significant reduction in the number of cancellations by patients, down from 32% in 2019 to just 9% since the implementation of the partial booking system.

It also helps outpatient services to plan more proactively up to three months in advance and this, in combination with the reduction in patient cancellations, leads to a better use of appointment slots. For the Pain Management Service this has meant that 95% of available slots are not only being booked but used each month.

71% of specialties at the Trust have either already gone live with, or will be going live with, partial booking throughout 2021.