Why a centralised contact centre for booking doctors appointments is a good idea

Today’s news reports on a proposed method of cost cutting in the NHS – the centralisation of GP appointment bookings – have so far been accompanied by much criticism from patients, doctors and – of course – the army of administrators and secretaries in doctors’ surgeries across the land that man the phones from 08:30 (and not a minute sooner) each day as hundreds of coughing, spluttering and more seriously inflicted patients hammer the redial button until they finally hear “ring ring” and are through to the surgery.

I’d like to see this idea greeted with more positive responses and in this post I put forward what I see as the benefits of a scalable, centralised approach to the simple transactions that surgery secretaries and receptionists currently perform.

I welcome feedback and criticism in the comments area below this post.

In my experience, the interaction with the appointment booker normally goes something like this:

Surgery: “Hello, XYZ Surgery, how can I help?”
Stuart: “Hi. It’s Stuart Lambert here. I need an appointment to see my doctor today please.”
Surgery: “Is it an urgent matter?”
Stuart: “Yes, I really need to see somebody today.”
Surgery: “What’s the nature of your illness?”
Stuart: “I’ll discuss that with my doctor, when can I see him?”
Surgery: “OK sir, I have an appointment at 3PM today, is that OK for you?”
Stuart: “Can you do 3:30PM?”
Surgery: “Yes, that is fine. I’ve booked that in for you Mr Lambert. We’ll see you later today.”
Stuart: “Great, goodbye!”

When I call to make an appointment with my GP there are just a few things I am looking for:

• my call answered quickly and by somebody who is easy to understand
• a quick and simple transaction with minimal questions
• no prying into my medical conditions by the secretary answering the call

What this story – and the comments on the various news sites carrying it – brings to the surface is that callers want a quick and convenient appointment booking process and are more concerned about the quality of the consultation with their doctor than the phone call to book it.

In fact, a centralised contact centre with greater scale and more sophisticate resource planning and queue management technology could arguably answer my call quicker. Integrated systems out of the reach of most GP practices could confirm my appointment by email or SMS and remind me of it near the time to reduce the number of expensive missed appointments the NHS has to pay for each year.

And the scale should allow more sophisticated technology that could make sure that calls are answered by somebody appropriate: maybe I’d get answered by a male advisor and my wife a female one in case we were calling for the results of an intimate examination. Maybe elderly callers could be answered by somebody of a similar age and sympathetic to their callers’ needs – more likely to remember to ask the caller if they have any special access requirements, for example.

Of course, public sector organisations have a history of expending huge amounts of public money on consolidation projects – especially in the area of IT and telecoms or any projects where external consultants are involved. But if these usual pitfalls can be avoided then, broadly speaking, a centralised contact centre for such simple transactions should provide great benefits to callers whilst reducing costs within the already stretched NHS leaving surgeries to concentrate on the business of providing decent healthcare services and treating patients once they are there.

About Stuart Lambert

Stuart Lambert is Principal Consultant at Qology, the contact centre queue management and callback solutions provider, and a proponent of sensible use of technology in the provision of service to the users of customer service.