Part of Berkshire West Clinical Commissioning Group, the Woosehill service was commissioned via the Winter Access Fund to provide phone and video consultations to patients. Thus far, the partnership has delivered over 400 additional appointments, receiving excellent feedback from both patients and the practice team.
As part of our PracticeTalks series, we caught up with Woosehill’s Operations Manager, Jane Jacques, to discuss their key challenges and experience with Livi to date...
Q: What has been your biggest challenge?
A: Our patient list has grown hugely. It’s been continuously growing. We haven’t had any more staff or capacity to deal with it and with Covid as well, we were just finding that patient access was becoming a problem. I think with this Winter Access Fund, it’s been a big benefit to us. We’ll be sad when it ends to be honest.
Q: How has Livi helped your practice?
A: Obviously having Livi has been a huge benefit because of the extra appointments. Like most surgeries, you open up at 8 o’clock and there are very few appointments. They are usually all gone within the first few minutes, so it’s wonderful to be able to offer Livi to our patients.
Q: Has Livi eased capacity?
A: Definitely. Keeping up with patient demand and ever-increasing expectation is a struggle. It’s a tough job to be a GP receptionist, dealing with a constant huge volume of calls and various patient enquiries. So, it's nice on a Monday and Tuesday for the team to come in knowing that they’ve got additional Livi appointments to give. And it’s also lovely to receive good feedback from patients after their remote consultation with a Livi GP.
Q: Has Livi taken the strain off your practitioners?
A: Absolutely. We have a duty doctor in the morning and afternoon, but of course once we're full of routine appointments people still call in asking to speak to a doctor. The duty doctor is then full up, which isn’t great because obviously they’re the emergency doctor as well and they have more than enough to deal with. Livi has taken some of the weight off their lists, definitely in the mornings which is the busier time of the day.
Q: How was your onboarding experience?
A: The instructions given were clear. You’ve all been very helpful and easy to get hold of and the process was smooth.
Q: What other benefits have there been?
A: I think one of the benefits of Livi is actually having it within EMIS and I think the team find that really easy to use because it’s just like booking with our own doctors, although it’s a remote service. We can communicate with the doctors as well through EMIS. It all helps. I have no complaints from patients or staff.
If you would like more information on the various ways Livi can help your organisation, please contact partnerships-uk@livi.co.uk.
