Digital Access – a ‘front door to the NHS’

Introduction

Digital Access means GP practices getting their digital ‘front door’ right for patients, so that the various elements and digital tools available will support patients to understand how to access services online. Many people may not be familiar or confident with using online options or understand the breadth of support now available; patients need guidance and support to better understand what tools to utilise for their specific needs.

It is also important that practices relay the message that they understand that not everyone is able or wants to utilise digital technology and that the key principle remains that all patients will have equal access regardless of the way by which they contact their practice.

The core elements of Digital Access (Digital Front door) are:

  • telephone (advanced cloud-based telephony)
  • GP practice website
  • online consultation tools to register healthcare questions with General Practice
  • video consultations to conduct appointments with patients
  • NHS APP – Online access including amending, booking and cancelling appointments, repeat prescriptions, viewing patients’ records, reviewing test results and ordering fit notes
  • SMS – 2-way messaging – viewing and responding to messages

Helping patients to use online services effectively is crucial to avoid them defaulting to the ‘telephone first’ approach. GP practices should guide patients to know what sort of problem they may require by being ‘triaged’ first and what kind of medical requests can be directly booked online, without needing triage; this is important both at the point of need and for future needs.

FutureNHS offers multiple resources to support GP practices with implementing digital transformation including:

Signposting to other services in the community is essential, especially when the practice is closed or when it is more appropriate for patients to use other services that can meet their needs. Doing this will maximise the use of NHS services, helping to distribute the workload so that demand is spread across primary care services to best serve the needs of patients and does not just fall to General Practice alone. GP practices can use digital communications to reach people before they need to access services.

There has been a recent surge in practices to onboard Automation tools and several guides have been developed to help support practices with implementation of these tools including:

Adopting ambient scribing products: guidance for CIOs and CCIOs. New guidance is available to support the adoption of ambient scribing products across health and care settings in England. The guidance includes an in-depth exploration of key considerations for Chief Information Officers (CIOs) and Chief Clinical Information Officers (CCIOs) leading artificial intelligence (AI) adoption, plus actionable steps for technical and product teams. Additional guidance will be published this year, aimed at supporting the broader health and care system.

The NHSE Ambient AI guidance can be found here:

In order to support and at the request of regional ICBs, Practices and PCNs, the South East region has published a Guide for Software Risk Management in GP Practices. This guide has been developed to help support correct implementation of software and mitigate risks for those wanting to work in this way.

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