Part of The better purchasing framework for advanced cloud-based telephony buyer’s Guide
About the Better Purchasing Framework for Advanced Cloud-based Telephony
About the framework
Telephony is an essential and critical component of a general practice’s ability to deliver its contracted service to patients. It is a public facing function affecting patient experience and practice efficiency and has a key role in business continuity, practice resilience and patient safety. The localised nature of GP telephony has in many cases meant that practice telephony systems have not kept pace with the practice clinical systems in terms of digital systems innovation.
Legacy systems may not offer the capacity or flexibility to service high and peak patient demands. Before the Covid-19 pandemic this was recognised as a challenge for practices. The demands arising from and the response to the Covid-19 pandemic across general practice including dramatic increase in home working and telephone consultations highlighted the limitations in many legacy practice telephone systems.
The current analogue telephone network will be fully decommissioned in 2027. This will affect all business and home telephony in the UK.
Telephony systems supporting general practices are now available which are Internet Protocol (IP) technology based, cloud hosted and integrate with the general practice clinical systems. IP converts calls into digital data to transport over the internet, rather than via dedicated phone lines. Cloud hosted: your phone system is hosted and supported offsite, making it more efficient, reliable, resilient, flexible, and secure.
IP-based telephony systems can deliver benefits including:
- support practice resilience and flexibility including remote working, home working, hub working and alternative locations (for business continuity response)
- support the practice to manage large workload and demand including growth in telephone consultations
- improve patient experience and access for example with automated attendant and Interactive Voice Recognition (IVR) routing of calls to the most appropriate service
- reduce call waiting times and improve patient experience
- support continuity of care for patients e.g. with automated redirection of incoming calls to hubs, alternative locations and out of hours sites
- provide a foundation for the ongoing integration of primary and social care
- secure good overall value for money
- support local and national planning with better information on telephony-based patient interactions
- drive convergence of GP telephony and general IT / digital services ensuring that general practice can benefit from the latest and most innovative technologies
Annex A lists some of the strategic and operational benefits which practices may expect from moving to an advanced telephony solution.
Last edited: 22 October 2024 11:58 am