Parc Canol Group Practice
Key stats
- Patient List size: 17,400
- Launched: 3rd September 2018
- Model: Routine Clinic
Key messages:
- eConsult means that we’re no longer giving appointments to patients who have purely administrative requests – saving appointments for those who really need to be seen by a GP
- There’s a real community feel among practices using eConsult – we’re all trying to evolve how primary care works for our staff and patients
- In less than 5 months, we’ve avoided over 1,500 appointments for our GPs
New housing developments within the Cardiff commuter belt means the patient list size at Parc Canol Group Practice has shot up. We can’t do all we want to do for our patients in the standard 10-minute appointment any more. Plus, like many practices, we’re finding it challenging to recruit new GPs who can help us cope with increasing demand for appointments.
We chose eConsult because it means we know what the patient’s issue is upfront – we can review requests remotely without the immediate need for a face to face appointment or phone call. This way we can give patients the advice they need while reducing the demand placed on us. We still call patients or book them in if we think they need to speak to a clinician.
“I’m very satisfied – it meant I could cancel my face to face appointment with the GP, freeing it up for someone else to book. I think it’s a brilliant idea.”
Patient
With limited GP resource, one of the benefits of eConsult is that other members of our clinical and admin teams can review eConsults. At the moment we’re getting around 40-50 eConsults a day, and we think we’ve saved around 1,500 appointments for our GPs over the last few months. We’re seeing the number of eConsults we receive grow, showing that our patients value the service we’re providing.
The more familiar we get with the platform, and the best way to integrate it into our daily workflow, the more time we think we can save our staff as well as time spent waiting for our patients. eConsult encourages patients to look to self-help options through existing materials or other local services, which we hope to encourage further.
“We find that even patients who are initially reluctant to use the system are impressed with it once we encourage them to try it and provide them with help if needed. We also find that a large number of patients are using the system frequently showing that they now find this the most convenient way to contact the practice.”
GP
The team at eConsult are really open to suggestions and there’s a real community feel between practices across the UK using eConsult. We’re all trying to do the best for our staff and our patients, so sharing insights between users means we’re continually seeing improvements in how we use the platform.
